A Baltimore-area registered nurse has been sentenced after she diverted morphine meant for a 10-year-old patient recovering from open-heart surgery, then refused a drug test when her own coworkers noticed what looked like fresh injection marks on her arm.
Kaitlyn Elizabeth Chalmers was working a shift in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the University of Maryland Medical Center on June 25, 2025, and was assigned to care for a child recovering from open-heart surgery, according to the Office of the Attorney General of Maryland. Chalmers documented in the child's medical record that she had given him intravenous morphine at 8:30 a.m. At about 9:18 a.m., the child complained to his care team of severe pain. Chalmers told another nurse she had given him a second dose around 11:30 a.m. — but that dose was never entered into his chart.
Caught by her own coworkers
During that same shift, a nurse saw Chalmers coming out of a staff bathroom with bruising and what appeared to be a fresh puncture wound on her arm, consistent with intravenous drug use, the Attorney General's office said. Other nurses on the unit separately reported that Chalmers was showing signs of impairment. The hospital asked her to submit to a drug screening. She refused. UMMC pulled her from the PICU floor and fired her that day.
The case was referred for prosecution, and on June 20, 2026, Chalmers pleaded guilty to one count of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud.
I've worked PICU and ICU shifts where a kid's pain score climbing from a 2 to an 8 in under an hour is the kind of thing that keeps you up at night — it's supposed to mean something is going wrong with the patient, not with the nurse holding the key to the Pyxis. What gets me about this case isn't just that she diverted. It's that a 10-year-old sat in real, documented pain for roughly three hours because the person responsible for treating it was using his medication on herself instead. Every one of us has worked next to a colleague who seemed "off" for a shift. This is exactly the case that should make you report it instead of assuming it's nothing — the kid in that bed doesn't get a second chance at the dose he was owed.
The sentence
Judge Alan C. Lazarow sentenced Chalmers on September 9, 2026 to one year in custody, with all but 30 days suspended, followed by two years of supervised probation. As conditions of that probation, Chalmers is barred from caring for children and is excluded from participating in any state or federal health care program. The Attorney General's office did not announce the status of her nursing license separately from the criminal sentence; Maryland's Board of Nursing handles licensure discipline independently of the criminal court, and typically opens its own review once a conviction like this becomes public record.
Diversion cases involving pediatric patients draw particular scrutiny because the usual safeguards — a conscious adult patient who can describe their pain accurately, a family member at the bedside around the clock — are often thinner on a pediatric unit. A nurse who diverts from an adult patient risks getting caught by the patient's own complaints. A nurse who diverts from a sedated or very young child is, in practice, relying on nobody noticing at all.