Nurse "Z" spent years stealing drugs from patients in Va. as a nursing home director at more than one facility, and sick people went without narcotics.
Later she had another job and was stealing fentanyl, oxycodone, morphine. By late 2003, with state monitoring starting to make it more difficult for her to take nursing home patients' drugs at will, she hatched a new plan.
Z went back "to visit" people at a Nursing Home in Richmond, where she once worked and had been fired. But she really was going back for drugs, according to later board findings. The registered nurse was peeling pain medicine patches off of residents' chests, scraping the narcotic off, ingesting it and sticking the useless bandages back on.
At the time, the Board of Nursing knew she was addicted — they had for years — and had allowed her to stay licensed. At the bottom, deeply in the grip of drugs and close to a suicide attempt, she still could have, during a window of several months before the state took action, applied for another nursing job in Virginia with her valid license and treated patients.
A statewide investigation by The News Leader discovered Zientek among 900 nurses publicly disciplined by the licensing board from 2007 to mid-2013 for drug theft and use at work.
Investigation: Addicted nurses steal patients' drugs
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