Drug Addicted Doctors Create Patient Risk

July 11, 2009— -- It's a prescription for disaster. Serious questions surround healthcare workers addicted to the very drugs intended to help their patients.

Former surgical technician Kristen Diane Parker was charged last Thursday with three federal drug charges after she allegedly stole syringes filled with liquid pain killers to take the drug herself then filled the syringes with saline solution and put them back, according to authorities.

Parker, 26, is infected with hepatitis C, putting almost 6,000 patients at risk during surgeries at the Rose Medical Center near Denver. So far, 10 patients have tested positive for the virus.

She worked at the medical center, but was fired in April after Fentanyl was found in her system in a drug test. Her last employment was at the Audubon Ambulatory Surgery Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Pat Criscito, who underwent surgery at Rose Medical Center in October and November and whose immune system has been weakened by years of arthritis treatments, feared she was next. If she tested positive for hepatitis C, she said, it would have been a death sentence.

Her results came in last week: negative.

"[Parker] knew what she was doing and did it anyway," Criscito, 57, said. "There will be people, not me thank god, but there will be people who get a positive test result."

Authorities say this offers a stark reminder of the hidden danger inside hospitals and doctors' offices across this country.

For healthcare workers addicted to drugs like the strong painkiller Fentanyl, the fact that those drugs are stocked in their offices and hospitals makes it easy to abuse them.

David Rosenbloom, the president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, said a doctor's proximity to drugs makes it easier to get hooked.