Patients endure ‘excruciating’ surgeries after nurse swaps meds with saline, suit says
Seven people who underwent invasive surgeries at a Yale University fertility clinic endured “excruciating pain” during their procedures after a nurse stole pain medication — and replaced the drugs with saline, according to a newly filed lawsuit.
The patients were supposed to receive fentanyl for pain relief during the surgeries but were given saline instead as a result of the nurse’s theft at the Yale Reproductive Endocrinology Clinic’s New Haven location, a complaint filed Oct. 10 in Connecticut Superior Court in Stamford says.
Their fertility procedures — including an In vitro fertilisation egg retrieval, a procedure involving the draining of an ovarian cyst, and a testicular sperm extraction — left the patients with “torturous pain” after the surgeries in 2019 and 2020 at the clinic, according to the complaint.
One patient who underwent an egg retrieval procedure in September 2019, “was in so much pain during the procedure that she thought her organs were going to come out through her groin,” the complaint says. She recalls the experience as “nightmarish,” according to the complaint.
This woman and the six other individuals are suing Yale University, accusing it of failing “to prevent and detect” the nurse’s theft of fentanyl and failing to inform them of the drug diversions, the complaint shows.
This is the latest lawsuit filed against the university by former patients who were given saline instead of pain medication at Yale’s fertility clinics, according to a news release from Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder PC law firm, which previously filed a similar lawsuit.
Sixty-eight people sued Yale in November 2021, accusing it of ignoring “multiple complaints from women that they had experienced excruciating pain during IVF egg retrievals, and other painful procedures” at another Yale REI Clinic located in Orange, the news release said.
“What started as a case that focused exclusively on treatment at Yale University’s Orange Fertility clinic, has now extended to the University’s care at its (New Haven) clinic,” the release said.
For the seven individuals involved in the lawsuit filed on Oct. 10, their painful procedures in 2019 and 2020 came before the nurse “admitted any wrongdoing,” according to the release.
In 2021, a former Yale nurse pleaded guilty in connection with using a syringe to steal fentanyl and reinjecting saline into the fentanyl vials at the REI Clinic in Orange, according to federal prosecutors in the District of Connecticut. In May 2021, the woman was sentenced to serve three years of supervised release, four weekends in federal prison, and three months of home confinement, prosecutors said.
The seven plaintiffs in the latest lawsuit realized what happened to them after listening to “The Retrievals,” a New York Times podcast about women who experienced painful fertility treatment at the university’s REI Clinic, according to the release. The podcast’s first episode was released on June 29.
“When I learned years later that the excruciating pain I experienced was a direct result of the institution’s failure to properly manage controlled substances, and that nobody on my care team or administrators at Yale had reached out to tell me about this, I felt betrayed,” one of the seven plaintiffs, who is an obstetrician-gynecologist, said in a statement.
McClatchy News contacted Yale University for comment on Oct. 11 and didn’t receive an immediate response.
A university spokesperson told WTNH it alerted law enforcement and fired the nurse after the drug diversions were discovered.
“Since this time, we have instituted additional measures to ensure we have the right processes, procedures and safeguards in place,” the spokesperson told the TV station. “These measures include training and enhanced management systems.”
Hundreds of vials replaced with saline, suit says
The latest complaint filed against Yale says the nurse swapped out “hundreds of vials of fentanyl” for saline in 2020 and before 2020.
A federal investigation found about 75% of the vials of fentanyl patients received during procedures from June 2020 to October 2020 at the REI Clinic in Orange were “adulterated with saline,” according to prosecutors.
On Oct. 4, 2022, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut announced Yale University agreed to pay $308,250 as part of a civil settlement in connection with the fentanyl diversion at the university’s clinic in Orange.
“The settlement resolves allegations that Yale failed to maintain complete and accurate records concerning the controlled substances it purchased and dispensed at the Yale Fertility Center, and failed to provide effective controls and procedures to guard against theft and diversion of controlled substances,” a news release issued by the attorney’s office at the time said.
The lawsuit filed by the seven patients argue it’s possible hundreds of Yale patients “underwent the most painful surgeries and procedures offered at the REI Clinic with little” or no pain medication.
“These victims spent years blaming their own bodies for the excruciating pain they experienced during their fertility procedures, after their Yale providers ignored and discounted their complaints,” Kelly A. Fitzpatrick, an attorney at Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, said in a statement.
“They are coming forward and seeking justice now, after having only just learned that their experience was not unique and instead that they fell victim to Yale University’s inexcusable systemic failures,” Fitzpatrick added.
The lawsuit comes a week after a Connecticut nurse was indicted on federal charges in connection with swapping out anxiety medication meant for patients’ medical procedures with saline, McClatchy News previously reported. It’s unclear where the nurse worked, as it wasn’t specified by prosecutors or in court documents.
The indictment filed Oct. 3 against the Southbury nurse, whose nursing license is now suspended, charges him with five counts of tampering with a consumer product, according to federal prosecutors.
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