Pictured: Florida nurse whole stole 450 vials of FENTANYL from hospital and used it on herself

A disgraced Florida nurse of nearly 30 has been convicted of stealing hundreds of vials of fentanyl and using the drug on herself.

Catherine Shannon Dunton, 54, took 450 doses of fentanyl, injected herself with it and then refilled the vials with saline over a three-month period between February and April 2022.

She was caught when colleagues at The Surgery Center at Jensen Beach noticed the missing drugs during an inventory check.

An investigation was launched and CCTV footage was used to identify Ms. Dunton as a suspect, according to court documents reviewed by the Associated Press.

Her license was temporarily suspended after an employer-requested drug test in March 2012 turned up positive for fentanyl.

During a doctor’s evaluation, Ms. Dunton admitted that she also drank at least one bottle of wine and four to five vodka drinks a day while under a substance abuse control contract.

She is facing now to 10 years in prison, followed by up to three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to a quarter of a million dollars.

Fentanyl – an intense synthetic opioid responsible for killing more than 70,000 Americans each year – is normally used as an anesthetic during surgery and for pain relief after surgery.

But in recent years it has flooded the illicit drug supply as dealers used it as a cheap and powerful adulterant.

Ms. Dunton worked from September 2021 to April 2022 caring for surgery patients at Jensen Beach, about 70 miles north of West Palm Beach.

She pleaded guilty to tampering with a consumer product in federal court in Fort Pierce on April 11, according to the Southern District of Florida US Attorney’s Office.

On or about May 24, 2022, Ms. Dunton underwent an evaluation with Dr. Lawrence Wilson, a physician specializing in addiction medicine and psychiatry, Florida Department of Health documents showed.

Ms. Dunton revealed to Dr. Wilson that she exchanged “Demerol, morphine, fentanyl, and Percocet for personal use” in 2008 while working as a registered nurse at Lanwood Regional Medical Center in Fort Pierce, Florida.

She said she signed a substance abuse monitoring contract with the Intervention Project for Nurses (IPN) in 2009, but admitted to drinking at least one bottle of wine and four to five vodka drinks a day for the first three years of the contract.

In 2011, while still under contract and working as a registered nurse at Lanwood Regional Medical Center, she exchanged 50-1000 mg of fentanyl from the center at least three days a week and injected it into herself, according to the documents of the Florida Department of Health. .

In March 2012, an employer-requested drug screening test tested positive for fentanyl, leading to the suspension of her nursing license until she completed her monitoring contract with IPN in 2017.

Ms Dunton told Dr Wilson that in March 2021 she started drinking a bottle of wine and three to four alcoholic drinks a day. She said she sometimes drank alcohol in the early morning and passed out.

Her family is concerned about her drinking, she said.

She was then hired at The Surgery Center at Jensen Beach in Florida around September 2021.

Between February and April 2022, she said she took vials of fentanyl citrate, a liquid form of fentanyl that doctors use to keep patients still during surgery and to ease their pain after surgery, and injected it into himself two to three days a week.

To avoid detection, Ms. Dunton replaced the narcotic pain reliever from nearly 450 vials with saline and then returned the counterfeit vials to the center for use during outpatient surgical procedures, researchers said.

She switched fentanyl and morphine by “removing the metal cap, removing the contents and replacing the contents with saline.”

Ms Dunton admitted she knew there were times when the patients would only receive the saline solution. This meant that patients went without their necessary pain medication after surgery, the Florida Department of Health documents said.

Prosecutors had arranged for a Food and Drug Administration anesthetist to testify that surgery patients receiving diluted fentanyl were not safe.

Inadequate pain control can also lead to an increased risk of heart attack or stroke in vulnerable patients, officials said.

Tampering with the vials also posed a risk of contamination, which could lead to infection during or after surgery.

Dr. Wilson diagnosed Ms Dunton with severe opioid use disorder and severe alcohol use disorder, claiming she is unable to practice nursing ‘with reasonable skill and safety for patients’.

On February 13, 2022 Ms Dunton posted on Facebook that she is ‘still in love'[d] my career after 30 years’.

In her last Facebook post, on June 2, 2022, Ms. Dunton asked for donations to the Florida Alcohol and Drug Abuse Association for her birthday.

She said, “I chose this nonprofit because their mission means a lot to me.”

The powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine.

The cheap and highly addictive drug is used by doctors for patients with severe pain or terminal illnesses.

Fentanyl was invented in the US in 1959 as a cheaper alternative to other painkillers used in hospitals and health centers worldwide.

Three chemicals, benzylfentanyl, 4-anilinopiperidine and norfentanyl and considered by the DEA to be precursors to fentanyl – meaning they are key ingredients in the drug’s creation.

It binds to opioid receptors in a person’s nervous system, which are responsible for giving the body a pleasant sensation when activated.