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

It does if it’s higher than the 8/500 dose, the 30/500 is prescription only!

You can't steal medication and expect there to be no consequences.

Tbh if they had an addiction or dependency problem the kindest thing to have done was alerted her to the fact that they knew what she was doing and then given her the support she obviously needed.

I'm not sure police and court is the right course of action in this situation. Unless of course if they'd been given plenty of chances already.

I was prescribed Co-Codamol once and it made me sick. Yes, unfortunately, it was not unreasonable to dismiss her.

Otherwise where is there line drawn? What if everyone just took 2 tablets from the stock whenever they felt they needed it?

What if a supermarket worker just takes a packet of crisps for lunch? A cashier takes a few coins from the till? All unacceptable and they would probably be dismissed too. Where would it end. YANBU.

She’s a nurse. She’s in a position of trust. No requirement to be “kind”.

'She’s a nurse. She’s in a position of trust. No requirement to be “kind”.'

Well I think everyone deserves a chance. If she was a respected, hardworking employee who was struggling with dependency problems then I think support and kindness is the way forward, if she was a waste of space who had been given every chance then yes maybe the police was the right call. We don't have the details do we.

Don't be soft. I was prescribed it at maximum dose for six years before I was in a position to taper off because I'd started DMARDs and high dose steroid pulses. I know what my eyes looked like and I know exactly what every other human being's pupils look like after one dose. The same as somebody using Oramorph, pure Codeine, Methadone or a street version of diamorphine.

I also know what a 76 year old woman off her fucking nut on what she claimed was 17-20 Tramadol a day looks like whilst both insisting that they didn't do a thing for her and simultaneously threatening to stab the GP receptionist for not giving her another three month's prescription just over a week after her last.

Pretty sure my eyes look exactly the same as anyone else's, I've been on dihydrocodeine since 2017 and not one person has ever mentioned it even when I worked for the NHS and was taking the max dosage
If my eyes looked like that and I was incapable I would have been pulled from taking emergency calls
Plus I take selfies, photos on nights out etc and my eyes look fine

That maybe depends. I had co codamol prescribed for torn ligaments. I went to work and had to come home as my brain was like cotton wool. In no way could I have done my job even remotely competently

It definitely depends how you are with it
I can take diazepam and oramorph and be absolutely fine to work but have colleagues who are drowsy after a cocodamol
I also come round from anaesthetic fast and have to have extra local for anything (red hair)

I've done that loads of times! It's either that or we go home. Particularly if it's out of hours and pharmacy shop is closed. Only paracetamol though.

Then given this situation, you better get that permission in writing from on high for the future or you can see the consequences....

I'll just get a box of paracetamol for staff instead. We used to have one.

I think its an absolute disgrace that her career has been ripped from her over 2 tablets. Shame on the people who made that decision. I hope they can sleep well in their bed at night because What goes around does have a tendency to come around, karma's rules not mine.

@Awwlookatmybabyspider “What goes around does have a tendency to come around, karma's rules not mine.”

Not in my experience.

Meh

Theft. Hard to have any sympathy

If you’re talking about consequences theft will do that

So you'd be OK with a police officer taking a few pills from the seized property safe? A prison officer taking a few pills from the medical suite at the prison?

Absolutely not - there's no professional excuse IMO for this. You're in a position of trust. If you can't be trusted you lose that position, oh and you'll also have to deal with the criminal consequences of theft.

What goes around does have a tendency to come around, karma's rules not mine.

Yes. Like how you lose your job after you repeatedly steal from your place of work.

Karma’s already been, this is the result

The strong co codomol which is prescription only, is 500mg paracetamol/30mg codeine. The codeine componant is the same as 3 mg of morphine. So she was stealing opioids which are also restricted drugs and need to be signed by two nurses to be given (in my hospital anyway) so she would possibly have forged this. Sackable offence, and she knew it. I don't believe they would have prosecuted for taking pain relief for a genuine headache. Codeine makes you sleepy anyway, so I think it was really theft of a controlled substance and more going on than they could prove.

If she took 2 she would have been unfit to work.

So nurses can be bullied into doing overtime, accept low wages and excessive charges to work, but take a big of paracetamol for a headache and you will be fired.

There is a similar problem in schools - where teenagers can attack staff, but those same staff then have to ring home to placate parents if the child accidentally incurs a scratch while they attack.

Yes there has to be a line - but it is being drawn in the wrong place, with far too much lassitude on one side and no give or sense at all for staff. This is why staff are striking and no one wants to do these ridiculously litigious jobs! Does the country want healthcare staff or not?

not sure why a ranting tramadol addict is relevant to my point that a single dose of cocodamol isn’t automatically visible in the eyes but ok . i take strong cocodamol for endo and it makes not one jot of difference to my pupils so there goes your theory!

Because she would claim exactly the same thing that there was absolutely no sign of having taken anything and nobody would ever know, even though, as you said, she was an addict.

It's just a visible effect of the drugs working, whether you take one dose of the 8/500s, a prescribed maximum dose of 2 x 30/500s over an extended period, opiates of other kinds or whether you're taking an absolute fuckton. In itself, there's no value attached it it because it's a normal physiological response to the active ingredients. But it's still visible, whatever the context.