ST. CLOUD, Minn. — A nurse at St. Cloud Hospital has been suspended after she allegedly gave 23 patients bacterial infections while stealing their pain medication. Hospital officials believe that the patients were inadvertently contaminated when the nurse took pain medication from intravenous bags for personal use and replaced it with saline solution.
Most of the patients who were infected had been hospitalized in the same unit between last October and early March, the Star Tribune reports. Hospital officials are unsure if anyone else was exposed to the bacteria at this time. They are asking patients who contracted an infection after leaving the hospital to contact them.
State and federal officials began an investigation after a number of similar infections occurred. Two strains of bacteria were found in the blood of infected patients; some patients had fevers. The infections, which were not life-threatening, were treated with antibiotics.
The nurse was suspended last week.
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