MUSKOGEE – A former nurse at a hospital in Ardmore was sentenced to one year in federal prison for tampering with pain medications reserved for intensive care patients.
Rebecca Elaine Holloway, 33, of Oklahoma City, was sentenced by Chief Judge Ronald A. White of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, to 12 months in prison for one count of tampering with consumer products. Federal prosecutors had recommended 41 months of incarceration.
Holloway received her LPN license in 2012 and began to work at a hospital in Duncan. In 2018 she qualified as a Registered Nurse and started working in Ardmore.
Holloway pleaded guilty on Aug. 31, 2023, admitting she stole fentanyl and hydromorphone intended for intensive care patients while she was employed at the Intensive Care Unit of Mercy Hospital in Ardmore.
According to investigators, Holloway removed the pain medication from their vials, refilled the empty vials with tap water, and returned the tampered vials to the controlled storage locker.
She admitted she did so despite knowing the pain medication vials were intended for patients in acute pain and distress, and that by depriving patients of the medication she knew she was placing them at risk of bodily injury and even death.
Holloway returned to work at the end of January 2022 after taking a leave of absence to recover from injuries sustained in “a significant car accident” in September 2021.
Because of various irregularities, Mercy Hospital removed Holloway from the nursing floor in April 2022. Hospital staff conducted an audit of vials of controlled substances that Hollway had accessed, and recovered five vials. Tamper-proof lids were missing from three vials of a fentanyl solution and two vials of a hydromorphone solution.
Holloway admitted she tampered with the medications and “fully accepted responsibility for her actions,” federal prosecutors told the judge.
“There is no doubt” that Holloway was still experiencing “significant pain” when she returned to work after the wreck, and that “it was a combination of undertreated pain” from an undiagnosed injury “and a growing dependence on pain medications” that drove her to steal analgesics from the hospital, the prosecutors wrote.
However, the Oklahoma Board of Nursing oversees a Peer Assistance Program that is “designed to support nurses who suffer from drug addiction in a way that the nurses can ‘return to or continue to practice nursing in a manner which will benefit the public,’” the prosecutors noted. Those resources “were readily available” to Holloway.
Furthermore, “The potential danger that patients faced from the tainted, tampered products cannot be overstated,” prosecutors claimed. A patient experiencing severe pain would have received a diluted dose of medication, which could have affected the medical decisions of the patient’s physician.
“More troubling, however, is the risk of infection caused by the introduction of tap water into the medication,” which could have resulted in “countless potential infections or diseases.”
Holloway “did not merely steal drugs from a hospital: she compromised the health, safety and comfort of vulnerable patients when she tampered with their medications for her own self-serving ends,” said U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Wilson. “We are grateful to the Food and Drug Administration – Office of Criminal Investigations and the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control for their outstanding work in investigating this case.”
Holloway is required to self-report on June 6 to a designated U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility to serve her non-paroleable prison sentence.