JACKSON: NURSE COULD BE STRUCK OFF FOR TAKING SLEEPING PILLS FROM WARD
A nurse who helped herself to sleeping pills from hospital stores months after she was convicted of being drunk in charge of a child could be struck off today (weds).
Eve Jackson, 30, swiped a pack of 14 zopiclone tablets while working a night shift tores at the Derriford hospital in Plymouth, Devon, while working a night shift on Christmas Eve, 2008.
An internal inquiry had been launched in September that year after pharmacists noticed a 13-fold increase in orders for the drug zopiclone, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard.
The cariovascular nurse worked on the hospital’s Braughton ward but took the drugs from nearby Tavy ward.
The NMC panel ruled Jackson ‘took tablets for which there was no clinical requirement in her employment.’
Panel chairman James Spencer said: ‘She did not follow the procedure laid down and did not make the written entry which she knew she ought to make.
‘She has never given any explanation of her actions and has simply denied any wrongdoing despite the eyewitness evidence against her.’
Earlier the same year, Jackson was convicted of being drunk in charge of a child after a police officer found her staggering around near a farm in Looe, Cornwall, on February 21.
Pc Helen Libby told the hearing that Jackson, nee Hampton, was half a kilometre from her two-year-old daughter, who was strapped into the back seat of her car.
She stank of booze, could hardly stand, slurred her speech and was found to be three times over the drink-drive limit when breathalysed at the roadside.
Her jacket was found discarded on a nearby hedge.
Following her arrest, Jackson refused to give a urine sample needed to secure a more accurate reading of her blood alcohol level.
An NMC panel rejected a letter from the nurse, who is not attending the central London misconduct hearing, in which she claimed she had been sober but ill.
The hearing will now move on to consider whether Jackson’s fitness to practise is impaired.
If they rule that it is, she will face a range of sanctions including a formal warning, temporary suspension or a striking-off order permanently banning her from the profession.
The hearing continues.
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