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The trial of an Air Force nurse accused of killing patients has begun at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Texas Public Radio’s Terry Gildea reports.
November 18, 2009 · Captain Michael Fontana’s court martial continued Wednesday with testimony from doctors and nurses who were present at Wilford Hall Medical Center when the three patients in question were being treated.
Major Donald Strancener a nurse who worked with Fontana took the stand.
The patient he took care of that night in August 2008 was Dorothy Gray, an elderly woman who had suffered a stroke with little chance of recovering.
Her family had approved a strategy called comfort care where the patient is sedated and will not be resuscitated. Fontana was instructed to give Gray enough morphine so she would not be in pain, but Strancener said as he began his shift and took over Gray’s care from Fontana, that he was alarmed by the amount of morphine Fontana had given the patient, a dose of 50mg.
Gray died about 40 minutes after Strancener started his shift.
Fontana’s defense team harshly questioned Captain Charla Tully, a 3rd year medical resident at Wilford Hall who wrote the pain medication orders for Gray, citing that she did not specify a particular amount of morphine to give Gray.
Fontana is also charged in the deaths of two other terminally ill patients.
He has opted to allow military judge Colonel William Burd to decide his guilt or innocence instead of a jury of officers.
If convicted, Fontana faces life in prison. |
