That happened to us too! We couldn’t understand why it was so hard to get animals under anesthesia (we used it as an IV induction agent), and didn’t catch on until [one vet] noticed someone had switched antihistamine pills for Hycodan [which contains hydrocodone] on a prescription.

We were unable to catch the guy in the act, but when we had a cop come in to describe to the staff what they were going to do to catch the culprit (as a scare tactic), he quit a day later and left town. We had no way to warn others unless we were asked for a reference (we never were).

Drug addicts are a sneaky bunch! I’m not sure they are purely evil, the drug is number one. It’s the part about the Hepatitis that guy spread around that is was so unnecessary.

The hospital part is troubling, and not that simple. Fired employees have rights, and employers are scared of lawsuits. It’s often hard to prove the wrongdoing when drugs are stolen. You can’t go on record as saying to all hospitals “We suspected this person of stealing drugs.” I’m not sure what the solution is, other than better screening (uh oh it’s big brother!).

We considered drug testing all employees after that happened, but our manager pointed out that virtually every employee would flunk, because they all smoked pot.

I agree that’s what current hospital practice says. And I don’t suppose it’s a job for H.R., but hospital administrations need to show some spine and REPORT bad people like this to the police (and licensing authorities).

The current practice or tradition is a bad one, and in a few cases enables these dangerous itinerant criminals. Hospitals don’t want to expose themselves to liability, but they need to do the right thing anyway.

You’re right, I should I have said what the charges were. I’m sorry you had to look it up to find out, and grateful you posted it here.

Apparently this guy is a sociopath as well as an addict, and what he’s done goes way beyond anything an individual can apologize for or make restitution for. Giving him a longer sentence or the death penalty* wouldn’t do much to balance the scales. If all the hospitals that enabled him to keep abusing, infecting and killing their patients and then sent him on his merry way to do the same at other hospitals stepped forward and made their own apologies, that would be nice… but it would be a lot nicer if *they* made restitution to patients, or for that matter got penalized by the appropriate agencies. Is anything like that happening, or likely to happen? —

* This post confused me, because it didn’t say what he WAS convicted of. He wasn’t charged with anything like murder or manslaughter, it turns out. Per CNN, “seven counts of tampering with a consumer product and seven counts of obtaining controlled substances by fraud.” Which does seem grotesquely inadequate, and puts the indignant quotes from victims and families into somewhat better perspective.

I looked up the Cullen case. Horrible. His motivation was different from Kwiatkowski’s but as you point out, the hospitals’ behavior was quite similar….

Also would like to see million dollar penalties to ANY hospital who let him go forward sans a BIG FAT GLARING NOTE in his personnel file. How horrible of them to just let him go and batten off of the next facility. DUH, people. It’s not like a drug addict is going to stop himself.