A nurse from The Villages has had her license restricted after she was allegedly found bloodied, bruised, and extremely intoxicated by clients who had hired her to watch their 5-year-old daughter who suffers from cerebral palsy.
The Florida Department of Health issued an emergency license restriction order for Stephanie Leigh Waites on Aug. 14, 2024. According to FLDOH, Waites has an address of record on Vapor Court in the Village of Osceola Hills.
According to the order, on Feb. 24, 2024, Waites was assigned to an overnight shift to care for a five-year-old girl with cerebral palsy as part of her employment with Team Select Home Care.
Waites arrived for her shift that evening and the patient’s parents left the home. While the patient’s parents were away, Waites allegedly became “intoxicated by alcohol and blacked out,” according to the order.
When the parents returned, they found their daughter asleep in her bed in an unsafe sleeping position. They noticed their daughter had abrasions, scratches, and bruises on her face, neck, and body that were not previously there.
Next to their daughter, in her bed, the parents found Waites, covered “in blood.” The order states that Waites had “blood coming from her nose and head” and that she had “bruising underneath her eyes and one eye was swollen shut.”
The patient’s parents saw bloody footprints leading to the bathroom, as well as bloodstains in the bathroom sink, and blood towels in the laundry room.
According to the order, the patient’s parents eventually were able to wake up Waites, but she was “delirious and confused.” The order states that she was “unable to explain why she was covered in blood or what happened to her” and the child.
At that point, the parents contacted the Marion County Sheriff’s Office. Responding deputies observed that Waites appeared to be “impaired by alcohol or another substance,” according to the order.
In addition to the deputies, emergency medical services also responded to the scene and attempted to offer aid to Waites. According to the order, Waites “became belligerent, verbally abusive, and uncooperative” with emergency medical services personnel.
Waites was eventually detained and transported to a local hospital for assessment.
The order indicates that the following morning, Feb. 25, 2024, Waites “presented to AdventHealth Ocala Hospital with the chief complaint of alcohol intoxication.”
While she was in the ER, Waites was allegedly “extremely aggressive and combative,” according to the order. She underwent a urinalysis at the time and had a blood alcohol level of 316 mg/dL. The legal blood alcohol content limit is 80 mg/dL.
Several days after the incident, Waites spoke with her employer and admitted that she did not have a recollection of what occurred while she was watching the child with cerebral palsy. During a conservation with management, Waites said she is “on a lot of medicines” but did not say which.
According to the order, Waites was arrested on March 10 on a charge of child neglect. While she was being arrested, deputies found “six tablets of Adderall” in her possession. Although she told deputies she was prescribed Adderall, she failed to provide proof of the prescription.
As a result, she was additionally charged with possession of a controlled substance without a prescription.
In April, the state dropped the child neglect charge. The other case is still pending resolution.
At the end of May, Waites underwent a department-ordered evaluation with a psychiatrist. During the evaluation, Waites allegedly explained that during the incident, she was experiencing “high blood pressure and took a ‘sip’ of vodka to help lower her blood pressure.” She told the psychiatrist that she must have consumed more than she thought.
At the time of her evaluation, Waites reported that her last alcoholic beverage consumption was two beers in March 2024. In conjunction with the evaluation, Waites was asked to undergo a PEth bloodspot test. The results of that test showed that her blood alcohol content was 137 ng/mL.
The psychiatrist opined that the result was “inconsistent” with Waites’ claim that she had “significantly diminished the amount of her alcohol consumption.” She was diagnosed with “moderate alcohol use disorder, possibly severe,” according to the order.
Hair toxicology test results during that evaluation showed that Waites had also smoked cannabis and had “greatly minimized her use of cannabis.” The psychiatrist also diagnosed her with “mild cannabis use disorder.”
The order goes on to state the psychiatrist opined that Waites was “not able to practice nursing with reasonable skill and safety to patients” and recommended that she engage in a “partial hospitalization or residential treatment program,” as well as to enroll in monitoring by “the Intervention Project for Nurses.”
As of July, Waites was not under IPN monitoring, according to the order.
“Waites’ severe intoxication while caring for a vulnerable child and continued consumption of alcohol despite significant personal and employment ramifications demonstrates her recurrent and problematic use of controlled substances and resultant diagnosed substance use disorders that impair her ability to practice as a registered nurse with reasonable skill and safety to patients,” reads the order.
It goes on to state that the incident shows that Waites’ lacks “good judgment and moral character” required to practice nursing and is “not capable of caring for patients in a manner that is correct and safe.”
According to the order, although the department considered various restrictions of Waites’ license, including requiring that she practice under direct supervision, it ultimately decided that those restrictions would “be insufficient.”
The order states that Waites is now “immediately restricted” from practicing nursing “until IPN or an IPN-approved evaluator notifies” the department that she is safe to resume work.
