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

'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.Trusts don't do that for two paracetamol.'

This!

Of course there's more to this than poor nurse takes painkillers and gets sacked and taken to court.

I agree. I dont know why people are insisting on making her a victim when its blatantly obvious there is more to this story than a nurse with a headache taking a mere two tablets. You cannot just turn a blind eye to meds going missing on a regular basis FGS.

Do you work in a hospital? My two DD's do (in different hospitals) and don't have issues with getting pain killers in work, no-one has to go home with minor aliments because of a lack of medication. There's been incidents of someone needing a once over, or a scan and the Nurses have obliged. Most hospitals have procedures for staff and there's very few jobsworths.

Unfortunately there are a lot of addiction issues within healthcare, possibly just because of the sheer numbers employed, long stressful hours etc. So there might be more to this story, as said, but she could also be a scapegoat for a lack of procedure following and poor leadership.

Quite!

When I was a HCA the NIC always gave me some paracetamol etc from the stores. Better than staff going home, she must have been making other mistakes and they wanted rid of her. It depends on the strength of the co-codomal was it 8/500? If it was the stronger ones it's POM so yeah not great.

I do question some meds keeping though , we have diazepam and lorezapam not in the CD cupboard or counted it's just stock medication. I worry to be honest it's an incident waiting to happen.

Sounds like addiction issues or she was supplying others.

Sounds like a great time to report it to management and raise your concerns about the method of storing medication. If they choose to ignore it, you have whistleblowing as an option.

Thing is even though not controlled drugs pharmacy keep a record of what they dispense and if an area is suddenly and persistently going through more meds like zopiclone or diazepam they investigate.

Ward nurses should know this I've no idea why anyone would think regularly taking from drug supplies will go unnoticed.

We don't have a electronic MARS we do go through a lot of diazepam and lorezapam. I work in ABI so it's handed out a lot but people could say they dropped the medication on the floor etc there's loads of supply as it's stock. We haven't been going through anymore than usual but where I've previously worked Diazepam has been counted.

Don't have to be off your tits for it to be obvious you've taken an opiate. It's an intrinsic part of the medication's action.

I can confirm. I was prescribed Tramadol when I broke my leg. It affected me for the first couple of days but then after that, noone would have noticed I'd taken it and thats a strong opiate based painkiller.

People do think that, but you can't hide pinned eyes, even if functioning appears normal.

Do you really notice "pinned eyes" on work colleagues wearing face masks (which they would be in hospitals)? even if you did, they could be on prescription medicine so its not really any of your business to go around asking people if they are addicted to opiates purely because they have small pupils. It could be for a legit medical issue like arthritis, endometriosis or anything. I was on tramadol for weeks. Not a single person ever made mention of my eyes.

This

seems fair to me

Whats wrong with you? Why not take a codeine and relax?

’pinned eyes’ from a co codamol 🤣🙄

Co codamol is not a heavy weight drug and staff with back pain or orthopaedic pain will take it. It's not incompatible with working, doesn't affect your decision making process. It's over the counter for a reason...doesn't require a prescription.

@you

It's not a high you get....co codamol is codeine (low dose) with paracetamol.... You can't get high on an overdose of it either...but you can damage your liver and kidneys with paracetamol.... No reason not to carry on working after taking co codamol...doesn't affect judgement any more than paracetamol does.

Some people absolutely do feel ‘out of it’ with codeine.

And the higher strength types are prescription only.

I was on the 30 strength for SPD in both of my pregnancies (3-4 times a day), for about 5 months each time. I worked throughout.

For the first couple of days both times, I took a half dose whilst working because it did make me tired and giggly, but my body soon adjusted, and I was able to take the full dose without it affecting my behaviour or judgement.

Neither would I. More to the story I suspect.

There’s her PIN down the pan, stupid woman!