The saga may be over as far as the courts are concerned, but the pain will last for the victims, and lessons will keep being learned by healthcare professionals. The saga? The debacle in which scrub technician Kristen Parker infected 18 people with her hepatitis C as a result of switching her own dirty syringes (which she would then fill with water or saline solution) with syringes of the pain-killer Fentanyl.
Parker, 27, was in late February sentenced to 30 years in jail. She worked at Rose Medical Center, in Denver, and Audubon Ambulatory Surgery Center, in Colorado Springs. According to The Denver Post, U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn made Parker’s sentence even longer than what sentencing guidelines call for, which is 20 to 25 years.
Parker pleaded guilty to counts of tampering with a consumer product and five counts of obtaining a controlled substance by deceit or subterfuge, according to The News Press, a newspaper serving communities around the Denver area. The News Press reports that U.S. attorney David Gaouette said the sentence should bring victims some measure of resolution, was appropriate and reflects the seriousness of Parker’s conduct. “Today’s sentence should truly send a message that there are very serious consequences for these types of actions,” The News Press quoted Gauuette as remarking.
Leaders from the medical facilities at which Parker worked have said that policies have changed to make processes safer (fingerprint access, passcode-protected medications, etc.). Some lawmakers, however, want greater assurance. In late February, Colorado lawmakers announced new legislation that would require hospitals to red-flag employee names on incident reports that go to the state health department, according to Denver ABC affiliate 7 News. “Under the proposed bill, employers would also be required to check the database of names before hiring a surgical tech, and must report disciplining and firing of a surgical tech for issues that may be a violation of the Surgical Tech Practice Act,” 7 News reports.
Healthcare stakeholders nationwide should be scrutinizing the Parker case whether the law requires them to make changes or not. Can a scrub tech, or anyone else for that matter, get away with this criminal behavior at your facility? Rudolph Gonzales, RN, MSN, CNOR, CRCST, CHL, has been the manager of central sterile processing at Medical Center of Louisiana, of New Orleans, since 1991, and shares his advice.
Gonzales oversees the sterilization and disinfection services for the entire hospital, including clinics, the surgical department, labor and delivery, central supply and materials, the emergency department, respiratory and pulmonary departments and diagnostics and treatments department, which includes the GI lab. Gonzales also serves on an infection-control committee, an OR committee, and the LSU State Infection Control and Product Standardization Committee. Gonzales has 18 years of experience in the operating room and central sterile processing. He is the president-elect of the New Orleans Chapter of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), and is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) and the International Association of Healthcare Central Service Materiel Management (IAHCSMM).
