Wexham Park nurse struck off after taking drugs out for herself

A former Wexham Park nurse is being struck off the register for dispensing strong sedatives and opioids without justification – suspected of stealing them for herself.

Following a Fitness to Practise Committee decision last week (February 4), the Nursing and Midwifery Council determined that Helen McLaughlan dispensed drugs dishonestly.

She dispensed them ‘for a different purpose’ than treating the patients they were supposedly for – and the panel inferred that McLaughlan was taking the medication herself.

The case

Suspicions were aroused after a routine check showed ‘discrepancies’ in the medication logs.

An investigation found that McLaughlan had dispensed medication to patients not in her care, not on her ward, or not even still in hospital. Most of the patients had surnames beginning with A.

Across about five months from November 2020 to April 2021, McLaughlan wrongly dispensed medicines 24 times. Seventeen of these involved controlled drugs.

Controlled substances are often addictive and can be abused. As such, hospitals have stricter rules for managing these.

McLaughlan wrongly dispensed opioid painkillers five times, and benzodiazepines – sedatives used to help with anxiety or sleep – 10 times.

These medicines were taken out while McLaughlan was working at the Ambulatory Emergency Care Unit (AECU).

The head of nursing of emergency and acute medicine at Wexham Park noted that these ‘were not medicines you would normally use’ in an AECU, which is for minor and acute problems.

This department head, a witness, said they were ‘shocked’ at the ‘number of discrepancies’ found in McLaughlan’s logs during the investigation.

McLaughlan could provide no explanation for this, except to say that someone else had used her digital account to dispense medicines after she forgot to log out.

But the panel heard that the system automatically logs people out after 90 seconds of inactivity.

She also tried to claim that she had used the system to get medicines out for agency staff, saying they did not have their own log-ins. However, this contradicted the evidence.

Evidence showed that McLaughlan dispensed pregabalin, a controlled seizure drug which also carries a misuse risk.

McLaughlan claimed that she dispensed it only to read the information leaflet and could not figure out how to put it back – which the panel found ‘implausible’.

They reasoned she could have asked for help – and had she simply left it out, it would have been quickly found by colleagues.

McLaughlan argued that, as a new nurse, she had not felt properly trained to use the dispensing system, Omnicell (essentially an electronic drug cupboard).

However, though there was no formal training, it was ‘a relatively simple piece of equipment’, according to a senior colleague – which she had been using ‘for at least six months.’

Thus, this purported unfamiliarity ‘could not account for the number of irregularities found,’ the panel said.

They concluded from these disparities in McLaughlan’s evidence that she was ‘not a reliable witness.’

Decision

Top of considerations for the panel was that McLaughlan had abused a position of trust, risked harm to patients and showed ‘a pattern of misconduct’ spanning months.

They also noted her ‘very limited insight’ into her failings and ‘deep-seated attitudinal issues’ including an ‘absence of any remorse or recognition of dishonesty.’

“Your misconduct involved a repeated deception and an element of personal gain,” they wrote.

“The panel also noted that the dishonesty in your case was towards the more serious end of the scale.

“The conduct…was a significant departure from the standards expected of a registered nurse.

“[It is] fundamentally incompatible with you remaining on the [nurse’s] register.”

As such, McLaughlan will be struck from it – meaning she cannot work as a nurse or midwife in the UK. She had 28 days to appeal the decision.

Meanwhile, the panel has suspended her from working for 18 months, though it notes that McLaughlan has not practised as a registered nurse for three years.

Responding to the outcome, a spokesperson for Frimley Health said:

“We expect all our nursing staff to adhere to high professional standards.

“We will always act when we have evidence that an individual has fallen short of these expected standards and where appropriate refer the case to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.”