A registered nurse caught taking fentanyl from a affected person beneath her care at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield has been sentenced to 3 months in jail.
Jessica Lotto, 37, of Pittsfield, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Mark G. Mastroianni in federal courtroom in Springfield to 3 months in jail to be adopted by one 12 months of supervised launch. Lotto pleaded responsible to 1 depend of buying a managed substance by fraud, deceit or subterfuge on May 31, 2022.
Lotto, on Feb. 27, 2019, “entered a sedated patient’s hospital room and removed fentanyl from the patient’s IV bag with a syringe,” in response to prosecutor Deppika Bains Shukla’s sentencing memo filed Monday. She was caught within the act by the director of the middle’s Critical Care Unit.
She then had a “brief exchange” with the director after which “dropped the syringe into the sharps container on the wall,” the memo states. The director then had housekeeping unlock the container and located the 60 milliliter syringe with about 10–11 milliliters of liquid inside, which was later examined to be the identical focus because the hospital’s customary fentanyl infusion resolution.
While the memo notes that the answer was nonetheless flowing to the affected person, Lotto might have simply contaminated the bag by her actions.
“It is hard to conceive of a more vulnerable victim than the patient in the instant case,” the prosecutor wrote. “Given the patient’s compromised medical condition and need for fentanyl for pain management, the patient was ‘particularly susceptible’ to the defendant’s criminal conduct.”
In his personal sentencing memo, protection lawyer Alexander Sohn notes that Lotto adopted the “effectively normalized … model of a ‘high functioning addict’” set by her mother and father. He wrote that her father smoked pot every day and her mom “would drink anywhere from a half, to a full, bottle of wine every evening.”
He additionally famous that Lotto on March 1 “will have four years of sobriety from opiates.” Despite having her nursing license suspended, she has since taken on coaching and rehabilitation and was granted “limited reinstatement of her” privileges.
Prosecutor Shukla requested for a sentence of 36 months, or three years, probation with the primary six months to be served at residence.
“The defendant stole fentanyl from the IV bag of a patient who was unaware of the defendant’s actions. In doing so, she put the patient at risk of infection and other diseases,” Shukla summarized. “However, the defendant is charged with a single incident, and she did not attempt to tamper with the patient’s IV bag by replacing the fentanyl with another substance, as did many of the defendants who received lengthy prison sentences.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”