Former nurse arrested for stealing drugs

A former nurse at Bloomington Hospital was arrested late Thursday night after she admitted to disconnecting a patient’s IV tube.  

Mary A. Edwards, 32, of Bloomington, faces preliminary charges of attempted theft and interfering with medical services.

Edwards, a former nurse who stopped working at Bloomington Hospital in September 2008, was on the fourth floor of the hospital and told hospital staff she was there to visit a patient, Bloomington Police Department Lt. David Drake said, reading from a police report.

After she went into a room, the nursing staff checked and found Edwards did not know the patient, so they asked her to leave, Drake said.

About 30 minutes later, hospital staff saw her going into another patient’s room pretending to be a visitor again. Hospital staff asked Edwards to leave again, this time calling hospital security, Drake said.

When confronted, hospital staff and security noticed Edwards was acting strangely, so they took her to the emergency area, Drake said. In the second patient’s room, staff noticed the patient’s IV tube had been disconnected, Drake said.

In Edwards’s purse they found a syringe and a stopper, which would be used for drawing up the medication, Drake said. Edwards was attempting to get the drug hydromorphone, a derivative of morphine, Drake said.  

Edwards admitted she had disconnected the patient’s IV tube and was in fact trying to steal the medication but said it was taking too long and she was caught, Drake said.