Nurse sacked & taken to court for stealing pain relief for a headache

[Poppedmytyreffs]

As above. What are your thoughts? Will try to post a link now

My immediate thought was that she has a codeine habit and that medication has been going missing for quite a while.

This is something that has to be 0 tolerance.
She will have known that you absolutely cannot take medication, no matter the reason. She should have been fired for this.

It's theft. Plain and simple. It'd be the same if a cashier took some paracetamol off the shelf in Tesco - but with much more severe implications as she's in a position of trust with access to all sorts.

Co-codamol is an addictive drug, so perhaps there is more to this. Surely a qualified nurse wouldn’t have been sacked otherwise, one would hope.

There is a massive issue with codeine addiction and theft within hospitals in the UK.
I don't think they could prove she stole more but its being reported that there had been a large amount of drugs missing.
It happened in my Trust and tracked keys allocated to individual users are now in place.
It's an absolute no-no to steal medication.

As a pp has mentioned, she probably has an opiate addiction and had been stealing it for a while. If this is the case though it seems harsh to take her to court over it. Losing her job seems punishment enough, especially if she's struggling with an addiction. Painkiller addiction is scary, it could literally happen to any one of us. You don't know how opiates will affect you until you're given a prescription and realise you like it too much.

We handle medication at work and are not allowed to use it for personal use. That's made very clear in our policy.

She shouldn't have taken it. If she gets regular headaches she would bring in her own supply, like many of us do at work.

However, unless there is something we are not being told, I don't deem this as a sackable offence.

Absolutely right to dismiss

This falls into the "massive professional fuck up" category, not least of all honesty, integrity and management of drugs.

This isn't eating a penny sweet in a corner shop - which is still theft - this is taking and using drugs in the hospital pharmacy.

No competent adult in the medical field should ever consider it OK to do this. As a teenager (18-20) I worked as a dispenser in a GP surgery with a pharmacy, and even I knew that would be gross misconduct.

"Other people did, so I did too" is a low answer to why she thought it was OK. She is an adult with her own brain - helping yourself to goodies in the medicine cupboards / pharmacy / dispensary / patients home / anywhere drugs are kept in your workplace is unacceptable. And she will have known that.

I would, and have been prescribed it in the past.

Girl? She’s 32.

Zero tolerance, but hard lesson to learn

What’s the vote - she was being unreasonable?

I remember about 10 years ago when the Trust I worked for sent an email around saying that if staff so much as took one paracetamol from stock they would be severely disciplined for theft. The surgeon I was working with phoned deputy chief exec to tell them that as he had developed a headache and wasn’t allowed a paracetamol that he would have to leave his operating list to walk to town and buy paracetamol. They were speechless! He did exactly that, and told all the patients exactly why, he asked every one of them to complain to the chief exec about the one hour delay to the list.
I loved that guy!

Obviously this case sounds different.

I’m over 32 and call myself a girl

Gosh when I used to work as a nurse people were always taking Paracetamol from the drug trolley ! Someone once approached me at the trolley and asked for Trimethroprim for a UTI which I obviously refused to give. The rule in our place was generally that Paracetamol was ok for staff but nothing else and if we did give Paracetamol out we had to check they weren't allergic to it !

I used to work in the NHS and if I needed pain relief or something I would ask one of the doctors to write me a prescription, and they always did.

'The hospital has declined to comment on Morgan’s dismissal or subsequent prosecution.'

Aka - bet there was other stuff they wanted to get rid of her for and this seemingly minor crime was the thing they could finally use to do it. There's always more to these stories than appears.

I can't believe that staff thought it was ok to just take prescription tablets tbh.

A headache? What kind of headache? A withdrawal headache per chance for which she needed to steal addictive drugs?

No hospital trust would install covert cameras lightly. I suspect there is much more to this.

I wouldn't want a nurse treating me that had taken codeine.

I've had tramadol for a bad headache when it was all I had to hand. Cocodamol is pretty mainstream.

Well, it comes in different strengths.

8/500, 15/500 or 30/500mg.

Not that makes any difference to what she did. It was still unacceptable to do, and if she suffered regularly from headaches, she could have had a cocodamol prescription on repeat from her GP like anyone else.

Codeine can be sedating unless you’re a regular user.
So either way - not ideal in a work situation.

Medication stealing is unacceptable. She knew this.

sounds like lots of staff were stealing - I’m sure if she had asked the pharmacy or a colleague could have helped her.

sounds like lots of drugs went missing / this implies addictions or multiple thefts - medication is controlled and it is not like she asked someone in charge. Sometimes they are stolen for selling or an addiction.

why didn’t she ask?