Nurse at Middle River Regional Jail shift takes methadone from drug cart
All the details in our Health Safety stories come from publicly available Final Orders, Consent Orders, Orders of Suspension and other documents from the Virginia Department of Health Professionals. Unless otherwise noted, direct quotes are taken from those documents. For more information, see the Editor’s note below the story.
VERONA – On Feb. 13, 2023, Laura Michelle Jolly was standing next to a medication cart in Middle River Regional Jail. She was supposed to give 65 mg of methadone to a patient.
She didn't.
Taking a step to make sure she wouldn't be in the sights of a nearby security camera, she ducked behind the medication cart and took the methadone.
A coworker reported Jolly seemed “altered” and had a difficult time focusing. Jolly didn’t know it yet, but she was overdosing.
Jolly took a break from her shift, driving to a nearby 7-Eleven. She was unsteady on her feet, rocking back and forth, remaining in the same place for 20 minutes.
And that's where she was found, unconscious, some time later, in her car outside the 7-Eleven.
Jolly was admitted to Augusta Health Hospital and was drug tested. She tested positive for methadone, tricyclic antidepressants, amphetamines, and benzodiazepines.
Middle River Regional jail discovered the missing methadone thanks to a drug recount and a missing narcotic log sheet. A lieutenant with the jail conducted an internal investigation, including speaking to Jolly at Augusta Health Hospital the next day. At first, Jolly told the lieutenant she met someone at 7-Eleven who gave her a Vicodin. She eventually admitted to taking the methadone at work.
In a follow-up interview, Jolly said she'd been taking her husband's Xanax and Adderall in prior weeks, and had been “self-medicating” with alcohol “for a long time.” In the initial interview, she told investigators she also had a THC gummy, but denied it in the second interview, instead saying it was a CBD gummy.
Jolly said that working at the jail was extremely stressful, and that she had additional stressors in her home life. She told investigators her behavior was a "cry for help."
A medical professional at Augusta Health told the board they were concerned Jolly had been seeing patients while intoxicated before overdosing on duty. Another told the board Jolly did not recognize she was intoxicated. Instead, she “believed she could return to work to complete her shift.”
The Virginia Board of Nursing issued an order suspending Jolly's nursing license on Feb. 3, 2024, including any multistate licenses.
But that suspension will be stayed when Jolly enters the Virginia Health Practitioners’ Monitoring Program. She will be monitored by the program for an undetermined amount of time. If she completes the program, the board may consider issuing her an unrestricted license.
The incident was not Jolly's only run in with the board. In 2015, she was working at Intrepid Home Health in Staunton. She was assigned to monitor a patient. Over the course of three visits, she reported no problem with the patient. This was not the case – the client was soon hospitalized for a “large sacral pressure ulcer.” After treatment, the client was discharged to a nursing home. Jolly was reprimanded by the Virginia Board of Nursing for the false reporting and required to take an ethics in nursing online course, but her license was not suspended.
Since the overdose, Jolly stated, she had made appointments with a psychiatrist and enrolled in a “virtual outpatient alcohol addiction program.”
As of early May, her license status remains "Suspended."
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EDITOR’S NOTE: When citizens are a danger to the public safety, law enforcement arrests them and charges them with crimes; they have the opportunity to face a jury of their peers; if convicted, they serve time and/or probation that can often ensnare them in the system for years.
When a medical professional is an alleged danger to the public safety, the Virginia Department of Health Professionals handles all facets of the inquiry, including the investigation and penalties. And sometimes, even when a medical professional is found liable of doing harm to patients, they may face a reprimand, pay a fine and continue to practice, without missing a day of work and with little chance for the public to see what they’ve done.
The Health Safety stories in this series tell the facts of cases where medical professionals endanger our public health safety. They also bring you into the world of the medical board’s consent orders and public final orders, so you can see exactly how the VDHP’s self-policing system works.
Lyra Bordelon (she/her) is the public transparency and justice reporter at The News Leader. Do you have a story tip or feedback? It’s welcome through email to lbordelon@gannett.com. Subscribe to us at newsleader.com.
This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Nurse at Virginia jail takes methadone from drug cart, found unconscious at 7-Eleven
