Air Force nurse Capt. Michael Fontana is charged in the deaths of three patients at Wilford Hall Medical Center, the Air Force’s largest medical facility. Fontana worked as an intensive care nurse at Wilford Hall, which primarily serves military personnel and retirees but also provides emergency and trauma care to some civilians.
During the Article 32 hearing this week at Lackland Air Force Base, prosecution witnesses testified that Capt. Fontana gave medication that had not been prescribed to an elderly stroke victim and over-medicated the others to ultimately hasten death.
One prong of Capt. Fontana's defense seems to be that he was providing "comfort care" — treatment that serves only to minimize pain in life's final moments. "He said the doctors and nurses were mad at him because he knew more about comfort care than they did," said Air Force Staff Sgt. Jessica Telles, one of Fontana's friends. A few of the eight witnesses who testified Wednesday said Fontana, had philosophical differences with his colleagues when it came to patients who were “DNR.” “People disagreed with his aggressive approach to DNR patients,” said Lt. Lewis Carver, a nurse.
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