A registered nurse who pleaded responsible from stealing and utilizing oxycodone from the Dedham rehab facility she labored for was sentenced to 3 years of probation.
U.S. District Courtroom Choose Julia E. Kobick sentenced Jaclyn McQueen, 44, of Dedham on Wednesday to 3 years of probation on a single cost of tampering with a shopper product. McQueen was each charged and entered a plea deal on Dec. 7.
From February via Might 2020, McQueen labored with long-term nursing dwelling sufferers at Hebrew Rehabilitation Middle in Dedham in the course of the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
McQueen’s protection attorneys say that McQueen’s use of narcotics was to deal with the “previously unimaginable stressors of dealing with increasing numbers of COVID patients” because the illness “spread like wildfire” on the facility. Whereas many nurses stopped working as a substitute of risking publicity, the sentencing memo states, McQueen stayed and noticed her work improve to 60 to 80 hours per week as her wards died and their members of the family weren’t even allowed entrance to say goodbye.
No less than ten of Ms. McQueen’s sufferers died of COVID throughout her final two months of labor. She contracted COVID herself in mid-April and was out for ten days. She went via opioid withdrawal whereas she was sick with COVID,” the memo states. “She promised herself that she would stay off opiates when she went back to work, but it was a promise that she was unable to keep.”
At first she simply pocketed oxycodone drugs that have been to be discarded anyway, however then she wanted extra and began utilizing lots of the liquid remedy and diluting the remnants with water to cover her actions, in line with courtroom paperwork.
She pleaded responsible upon being charged and an enormous variety of supportive letters present she has since improved her station and marked three years of sobriety on Sept. 5.
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