A former intensive care unit nurse has been arrested for allegedly swapping patients' pain medication with tap water, police in Medford, Oregon, announced Thursday.
Dani Mari Schofield faces 44 counts of assault in the second degree, charges that "reflect the total amount of patients that this investigation revealed to have been affected by Schofield’s criminal actions," the Medford Police Department said in a statement.
Assault in the second-degree charges are filed when an individual "intentionally or knowingly causes serious physical injury to another," the statement said.
The arrest comes nearly seven months after officials at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center, a 378-bed hospital in Medford, contacted police with concerns about a growing number of central line infections among patients. Central lines are tubes put into large veins to administer medication.
“There was concern that Schofield had been diverting patients’ liquid fentanyl for her personal use and then replacing it with tap water, causing serious infections,” Thursday's police statement said.
Police did not say how many of the patients that Schofield allegedly mistreated had died. In March, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of the estate of Horace Wilson, an Asante patient who died after he was admitted to the hospital with a lacerated spleen and broken ribs following a fall off a ladder in January 2022.
The lawsuit alleged that while hospitalized, Wilson's pain medication was replaced with nonsterile tap water, introducing bacteria into his bloodstream that led to his death.
The lawsuit named both Asante and Schofield as defendants, accusing them of negligence. Neither responded to requests for comment at the time.
The allegations of drug diversion — a term that refers to misappropriating prescribed medications, sometimes to abuse or illegally sell them — were first reported by NBC affiliate KOBI-TV in Medford in December 2023. The station said that at least one patient at Asante had died after a nurse allegedly diverted their pain medication.
An attorney for Schofield, who police said left Asante in July 2023, did not immediately respond to a voicemail seeking comment.
Records from the Oregon State Board of Nursing show that Schofield voluntarily agreed in November 2023 to a nursing license suspension, "pending completion of an investigation.”
In an internal memo sent Thursday to Asante employees after police announced Schofield's arrest, President and CEO Tom Gessel thanked law enforcement for its "tireless work since our team brought concerns forward to them."
"We are greatly appreciative of the countless hours their investigators have spent on this complex matter," he wrote.
