The state's nursing board has revoked the license of a Mission Viejo woman who admitted stealing pain medications from Hoag Hospital patients. Atalie Mitchell's undoing began on April 4, 2009, when a visitor to the Newport Beach hospital found a bloody needle cap in a women's restroom. Later, a nursing assistant and registered nurse separately discovered syringes on opposite sides of a chair Mitchell had been sitting in at Hoag. Later still, she tested positive for a painkiller despite having gone through rehab.
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Patch.com gets the scoop.
A California Board of Registered Nursing complaint discloses Mitchell mishandled medicine for seven patients at Hoag, which fired her on April 15, 2009. She had admitted to a hospital attorney that the syringes that were found belonged to her and that one had contained Digoxin that was supposed to be given to a patient. She confessed she stole drugs from patients.
Mitchell entered a drug rehab program in July 2009 with the stipulation she would refrain from alcohol, painkillers and other mind-altering substances, but she would test positive on March 18, 2011,
and April 5 for the painkiller Buprenorphine, according to state investigators.
Besides being barred from nursing in California, Mitchell must pay for the investigation and enforcement of her case, Patch reports.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.