swiped additional medication<\/a> during her second attempt.<\/p>\nCops said Pope wasn\u2019t even assigned to the patient she allegedly ripped the fentanyl from.<\/p>\n
Pope told police that an alarm \u2014 she described as an \u201cupstream occlusion\u201d \u2014 required her to intervene with the IV, according to Brittany McNally, a public information officer with Port St. Lucie police.<\/p>\n
However, the patient\u2019s significant other, who had experience working in a medical environment, disputed Pope\u2019s claim. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut again, she\u2019s not even assigned to that patient, so there was no initial justification for her to even be in that room at that time addressing that patient,\u201d McNally told CBS 12.<\/p>\n
Pope was arrested on Oct. 8, months after the alleged incident took place. Credit: Port St. Lucie Police Department<\/p>\n
\u201cThe family member actually was well versed in the medical field and had a history of working in that environment, which caused her to raise questions and caused her to notify the chain of command at the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hospital conducted an internal probe and contacted the Florida Department of Health, who notified police, according to McNally.<\/p>\n
Cops began investigating in August and Pope was arrested on Oct. 8 with assistance from the Palm Beach Marshals Task Force.<\/p>\n
She was slapped with a slew of felony charges including grand theft of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance without a prescription and fraudulently obtaining a controlled substance.<\/p>\n
Investigators have not determined what the nurse allegedly intended to do with the drugs \u2014 while Pope has denied the allegations. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to speculate what she could be using it for, whether it\u2019s personal or, you know, selling it,\u201d McNally said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pope no longer works at Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have that information at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pope worked at the hospital for around six months, McNally said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe take these allegations very seriously. The individual no longer works with us, and we are fully cooperating with law enforcement,\u201d Cleveland Clinic said in a statement to CBS12 News.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause this is an active investigation, we are unable to comment further at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hospital did not provide details as to when Pope\u2019s employment ended or if she was fired, according to the outlet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Post reached out to Port St. Lucie Police Department and Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital for more information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Florida ICU nurse allegedly stole fentanyl from a critically ill patient\u2019s IV infusion \u2014 and tried going…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[4864,1069,28,10116,34468,171,173,172,4278],"class_list":["post-428259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-arrests","tag-fentanyl","tag-florida","tag-hospitals","tag-nurses","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}