A nurse in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is facing public intoxication charges after authorities said he came in to help with an emergency surgery earlier this month while drunk.
Richard Pieri, 59, told police he had drank four or five beers while playing slots at a casino and was heading home when he was paged to assist with an emergency appendectomy at the VA Medical Center, WNEP reports.
Pieri was in charge of “preparing the patient, preparing the material in the operating room, and monitoring that patient's vital signs during surgery,” the report added.
Hospital officials told WNEP that Pieri wasn’t acting like himself and had issues with logging into the computer system and correctly putting in the time of the emergency surgery. He was reported by an anonymous co-worker, WNEP added.
Police said Pieri admitted to be intoxicated during an interview, saying "I guess it has something to do with me being drunk on call," the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader reports. He also told police that he knew he wasn't supposed to be working while drunk, but forgot that he was on call, according to the Times-Leader.
He was charged with recklessly endangering another person, DUI and public drunkenness.
Read more at WNEP and the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader.
About the Author
