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

Well they are over the counter drugs and cheap...

The report said that prescription medication was going missing so we’re not just talking paracetamol.

It is question of where to draw the line. You just can't allow staff to take medication from pharmacy. Co-codamol is an opiate and if the nurse needed it she really should have it prescribed. If medication had been going missing for long enough that the Trust installed cameras, there must have been a significant problem.

I sometimes get tension headaches and only codeine touches the sides, I take it if I have to work and can't lie down in the dark. Might be a bit strong for taking if I had to work as a nurse though I can really feel the affects of the codeine when I take it. I wouldn't feel safe to drive afterwards.

Well let's see. You can see how devastated she is, and equally the outrage of the Sun's editors, by the photos of her pouting in her most glamorous partial undress. I doubt the Sun would have been remotely interested had she been a slightly overweight 45 year old with sagging boobs.

But the bottom line - and not based on the photos of her trim backside -
No nurse thinks that stealing drugs is allowed.
Co-codomol at a pharmacy level is a controlled drug, and every nurse would know that - the theft of a controlled drug is a serious offence.
Nobody should be working in healthcare if they steal drugs.

No sympathy. She got what she deserved. She'd probably have struggled to ever work in a DBS checked occupation anyway, but thanks to her day in the Sun, there'll be many employers who don't want an unrepentant thief on their books, and the Internet lasts for ever.

I do and always have

Paracetamol & codeine can work well for a headache. Although only a small minority of people can metabolise codeine so wouldn't be suitable for all.

No mention of any NMC involvement in the DM article when I read it a few hours ago. So possibly not an actual qualified nurse, the DM can be very flexible about calling unregistered staff nurses.

I suspect there's more to this. And apart from that it has to be a zero tolerance policy and she will have been well told.

@Poppedmytyreffs I’m always suspicious of posters who start a “what are your thoughts?” thread, and don’t contribute their own thoughts.

They can't have staff just helping themselves to drugs. There needs to be zero tolerance on this.

I do. Paracetamol on its own never works.

I understand all the protocols and why but yeah it’s a big injustice. Poor woman was probably taking them so she could keep on with her shift rather than go home sick. I can’t see how the NHS benefits from losing a nurse over it.

All nurses know it’s quite rightly zero tolerance. There’s far more to this than has been reported.

This is important I feel: nurses usually work 12 hr shifts with 30 mins for lunch and maybe a teabreak somewhere in the day, they cannot nip out to a pharmacy/shop, a lot of major hospitals are huge so leaving the place to find a pharmacy or shop would take all of their break time or more, and ward work is relentless so they can't wait for a quiet moment to ask to go off the ward. There used to be guidance about staff being able to have paracetamol (I know this is something much stronger) to allow for this, but this may have changed since. There are many concerning things in this story: why the Trust decided on covert surveillance, what else was going missing and is this nurse a scapegoat for something bigger: and there seems a lot of baying for blood on this thread: I wonder if those ready to condemn her have never done anything dodgy themselves? And the person who thought Fentanyl would go missing next: controlled drugs have very high security and are not easy to steal, a huge fuss is kicked up at any discrepancy and staff have to stay till it's sorted

It wasn't one occasion

It wasn't one or two pills

It was enough that they noticed and conducted an investigation....

Co-codamol is potentially addictive,,isn’t it? I had some for shingles, and it said not to take it for more than 3 days.

As pps have said, I suspect there’s more to it than this. People do get addicted to such painkillers.

Do you think that in a hospital desperate for staff (they all are) that if they inadvertently caught a minor offender during a “sting” for a bigger fish, they’d prosecute and fire - not give a final warning?

She took a singular paracetamol and on a sepertae occasion a singular co codramol. I have taken co codramol for a headache plenty of times so yes you can take it for a headache.

If they are the rules then so be it sack her. But to take her to court! Did they want her to go to jail?!

There was medication going missing in worrying quantities over a period of time
The trust implemented secret tablet counts twice a day and installed covert filming. She was caught taking medication on more than one occasion

So as expected there's a lot more to this than is being reported

Quelle surprise ...

Where I work we take the drugs from our personal stock or a colleagues.

I usually have ibuprofen and paracetamol in my bag or locker.

20yrs ago (non prescription) drugs off the trolley were ok but not now.

I work in the NHS, clinical, but not a nurse, there’s definitely more to this story, the hospital are not going to take it this far over a couple of paracetamol and co-codamol tablets taken for a headache. She would be internally disciplined as it is a serious “error” and that’s probably it, there was obviously a hell of a lot of medication being stolen or the other medication taken was of high value for them to go to the trouble of installing covert CCTV. Of all my years working in the NHS, I’ve never heard of that happening. My guess is they knew she was stealing a lot more, but couldn’t prove it.

There would have also been serious discussion and likely questioning about missing medication before it got to that stage, so she would have been well aware that even taking a couple of paracetamol would be seen as a very serious offence. I think there’s way more to this story than her just taking a couple of tablets for a headache.

I'd love to see a better written article. I very much doubt she was in the hospital pharmacy. Access is tightly controlled to avoid non pharmacy staff getting in. Most Trusts also have dispensing robots so packets of drugs are not easily accessible to outsiders. She was probably taking from the treatment room on the ward. Co codamol is not stored in the controlled drug cupboard in most places so would be easier to get than tramadol or morphine tablets.

I wasn't a controlled drug in the trust I worked for.

@Shesasuperfreak “If they are the rules then so be it sack her. But to take her to court! Did they want her to go to jail?!”

Before you get anywhere near court, you know what the sentencing guidelines are - so no, they didn’t want her to go to jail, they would know what the range of sanctions for this crime were, and also the impact of aggravating factors.

The trust didn’t “take her to court”. They involved the police, who chose based on evidence to refer it to the CPS, who decided on the charge.

The trust presumably wanted to dismiss her for theft, and possibly needed to involve the police to do that. At no point wax anybody trying to send her to jail, you’re way OTT.