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 thoughts on this as asked by a previous poster is that there has to be more to this story. A nurse getting sacked for a one off dose of co-codamol? I've known people to take 5 day courses of antibiotics that their GP has prescribed, but have taken them because they can't get to a pharmacy, are working or to save the prescription cost etc etc

She sounds like an opiate addict. Her behaviour suggests surreptitious recurrent opiate theft not a one off for a single headache.

Did you look? Anyone can’t access the NMC register to see if a ‘nurse’ is actually qualified…a neighbour of mine calls herself a nurse, she’s actually a carer, annoys the eff out of me.

This. Tbh I assumed you couldn't even get paracetamol as assumed all medication was closely monitored, I've seen that in a care home but I'm not a medic so don't really know how they would manage if people were allowed to help themselves.

Where I worked previously secret cameras were installed as meds were going missing. Staff were only informed after the thief was discovered and sacked. No-one was happy about the cameras!
All nurses know stealing meds is gross misconduct 🤷‍♀️

Quite. The only Francesca Morgan on the NMC Register qualified more than 20 years ago so I don't think it's this person.

It doesn't affect everyone the same. I take codeine 30mg most days and it doesn't impair me at all. I'm the same with diazepam/oramorph, anything like that

Reading between the lines it was far more than the occasional cocodamol for a headache. For the hospital to install cameras and do a daily tablet count means that more than just a few pills were going missing. She may be being made a scapegoat for other nurses who work there, but it reads to me like an opioid addiction. I'm sure the NMC Hearings page will have all the details.

It doesn't say the mg. A 30/500 or 15/500 would be a prescription only medication but still co-codomol, and is a higher dose than other co-codomol which is still a pharmacy only medication, and not off the shelf but over the counter with screening questions. So it's not the same as popping a paracetamol, but obviously that still shouldn't be taken from the hospital pharmacy without a prescription, because it's stealing from the hospital and also then have to have zero tolerance, and be able to account for medication. Did she write that a patient had been given it when really she'd taken it? That's stealing from a patient, could affect their care and could actually be dangerous if somebody uses the drug chart to work out other meds later on. It sounds like she might have had an opiate habit, or there was a culture there and she was scapegoated. Either way, it is really unprofessional to take meds without a prescription and I don't think the hospital was wrong to fire her, although of course it's sad what the consequences are for her especially if she was the scapegoat, not the person stealing the other meds as well.

It's theft. It doesn't matter what she took, she didn't have permission to take it. She stole from her place of employment. Twice that they saw. That is enough to get you fired anywhere.

There's a Franchesca Morgan registered from 2016 in the Cheshire and Merseyside region. The hospital was near Liverpool, so I suspect that may be her. No restrictions on practice at present.

Again, it depends on the strength of cocodamol...

The sign off on that is immense! She got caught on low level meds, the suspicion would have had a high bar and they waited till they had enough to safeguard the drugs cupboard and prevent potential greater harm

@ancientgran you're most likely an ultra-fast metaboliser. Most people don't experience that effect.

Really, he sounds like a bit of a dick, wasting time when he could have asked someone else for one like a normal person or if no one the whole hospital had their own painkiller he coul have asked someone else to get him one

Well I'm sure she was aware of the zero tolerance to stealing drugs, so she brought it on herself. She had been taking prescription medication then they installed a camera and caught her, doesn't sound like a one off.

It was silly of her to think this was ok in this day and age - in the 80s nobody would have ever known. In the hospital pharmacy store I worked in, even after they got computerised it was like any other shop/store where stock went missing and just got written off.

It sounds like she has been made an exmaple of and they have thrown the book at her as a warning to others - as they installed cameras and implemented daily stock counts due to meds going missing regularly - probably people nicking temazepams not staff getting a paracetamol.

I would. Sometimes it's the only stuff that works. It's the active Ingredients in Solpadine and that's actively marketed for headaches. Also available over the counter.

If she's a nurse with a banging headache surely taking a couple of tablets of an OTC medicine so you can finish your shift is permitted.
Obviously not. Madness with no common sense.

I suspect it was the highest strength co-codamol the 30/500 not 8/500 she was regularly stealing. This is prescription only and not recommended for regular use for headaches or most benign aches and pains

Everyone knows this is a sackable offence

From the article, talking about the prosecutor:

“She stressed that the nurse was not accused of being responsible for the theft of all of the drugs.

'We are not accusing her of the entire theft,' the prosecutor said.

'These are two limited incidents.”

So someone else was taking lots of medicine, but they only managed to catch the nurse who took a paracetamol and a co-codamol, so they prosecuted her. In monetary terms those two tablets are probably the equivalent of an office worker taking an envelope from the stationary cupboard. I get why they have to take a zero tolerance as an employer and sack her, but it’s pretty baffling that the CPS thought this was worth prosecuting.

Thieving from work should always be a sackable offence.

Codeine is not a controlled drug. All drugs require a prescription before they can be administered in a hospital setting but only controlled drugs are counted each time they are administered.

This story is bizarre. The amount of paracetamol and co-codamol administered when I worked on the wards was such that keeping track would have been a full time job. There’s no way we could have had people secretly counting it up without us noticing.

It's prescription medicine so that's pretty serious.

I routinely use Co codamol
paracetamol alone is not effective for me and I can’t take NSAIDs
as long as you don’t take it persistently there’s no issue