'Staff need to be clear about what constitutes theft'

Readers' comments (20)

• Anonymous | 19-Sep-2011 11:41 am

  !. Yes of course you'd get a dressing - what's the alternative? Drip blood all over the place, risk infection for yourself and/or the patients?
  
  2 & 3. Providing alternative food can be sourced (ie. shop or canteen), no.

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• Anonymous | 19-Sep-2011 3:40 pm

  What about the theft from staff by trusts? What about the huge sums of money wasted on harebrained schemes. All the missed meal breaks, time owing but never able to take back? Staying on after end of shift. No overtime payments etc etc etc. The list is endless. I for one would not feel guilty about taking bread for a slice of toast if,as can be assumed, I probably wouldn't have had anything to eat or drink all shift then expected to conduct a drug round safely with my blood sugar in my boots at 4am. This sort of thing would not be tolerated by prisoners in jail! There would be rioting. Get a grip.

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• Anonymous | 19-Sep-2011 4:21 pm

  Gerry Robinson had a sensible approach to this area in his program about care homes, the staff made toast for themselves while on a long shift so the owners had locked up the bread. He told the owners that it was such a small thing that it was wrong of them to loose the good will of the staff over it. Rather than leave this as a grey area there should be a policy in place to say what is and is not available to staff or at least someone with the clear authority to ask so that there is no excuse for taking things without consent.

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• mike | 19-Sep-2011 5:42 pm

  I think this is bloody ridiculous! I would rather a member of staff grab a couple of paracetamol from the trolley rather than them being unable to perform their duties to the best of their ability and even potentially removing a member of staff from the team!!! If a Nurse gets a headache and cannot function, a couple of paracetamol will sort it out and they can carry on. What is the alternative, they can't carry on and go home? I know its a very basic example but it works. What about the cost of getting an agency/bank to replace them? Is that better than the cost of a couple of cheap stock medication? It is not like we are talking CDs or prescribed drugs here is it?
  
  As others above me have rightly said, what about the goodwill and wellbeing of the staff? Shouldn't staff be looked after as well as the patients? What about all the unpaid hours/missed breaks/extra jobs we do for no extra pay?
  
  Little things like this ARE NOT THEFT!!! These petty, pathetic trusts should grow the hell up and stop accusing good Staff Nurses of what is a very serious crime, before they lose what very little good will they have left.

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• Anonymous | 19-Sep-2011 7:12 pm

  I agree with all that is said above. But maybe because there is such a lot of difference of what is acceptable and what isnt, there should be a standardisation of what is acceptable and allowed ie a dose of paracetamol and or ibuprofen. but anything stronger has to there own medication. I say this to stop nurses who are dishonest or have a addiction knowing what is right and wrong. so if they then take codeine or tramadol for example they cant say oh i didnt know, or i take these normally. It protects the majority of genuine honest nurses that do need the odd headache tablet. Sad to say but you have to cover your back all the time, but at least everybody knows where the boundries are.

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• mike | 19-Sep-2011 8:32 pm

  Anonymous | 19-Sep-2011 7:12 pm I agree, but the thing is, all this could be avoided completely if the management showed a bit of common sense, a trait that is sorely lacking in the upper echelons of the NHS.

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• Anonymous | 20-Sep-2011 10:51 am

  The problem I find is that scenarios above happen a lot so yes I would be inclined to agree with above coments. However scenario 3 is a fundamental floor of all wards. We are currently trialing cook as you need food which can be prepared 15 mins before required to address this issue. This would seem a common sense approach to this problem. But as with all scenarios and situations like this someone has to take advantage and spoil it for the rest of the staff. I used to work with a nurse who never brought food and would pilfer the cupboards at night. So the cupboards were locked and all food no matter how small was sighned in and out! So if scenario 2 happened and you missed the canteen opening as some poor sole was arresting tough! But that was all down to one particular nurse and the next time I worked with her and this happened I didn't share my jellies!!! and yes she sulked!

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• Yvonne Bates | 21-Sep-2011 11:30 am

  Now lets be sensible here....really!( Im writing this with two slices of bread in one pocket, a box of bandaids in the other pocket, and my panadol stuck in my bra!!)
  2. Missing a break due to any ward problem should be half an hours pay by law into my wage packet....Missing my "MEAL break to eat is negligant if you do not have the availability to food on a shift .
  How much is 2 slices of toast and jam as opposed to claiming the 30 min meal break??
  1, Cutting my finger in the hospital park....you are on hospital property and therefore did the injury at work I would have said.
  The hospital has a DUTY of CARE to you.
  No bandaid/ cleaning. Go home off sick!
  3. No you cannot...However there MUST be the time and food availability elsewhere for you.
  There will ALWAYS be staff that do the wrong thing and take what they should not, but these senarios are just about staff care.( No 3 is dodgy even here )
  Talk about looking after nurses that already give their absolute blood sweat and tears.
  How many nurses work already sick.....yep you can relate!
  There is a huge line between a nurse that wants something to help her get through a shift and to someone who is really stealing.
  Look after your nurses!!

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• Sarah Stanley | 24-Sep-2011 10:50 am

  Eileen Shepherd your article is not only ignorant but also offensive.

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• tinkerbell | 24-Sep-2011 11:34 am

  Heaven help us all. I have 'stolen' a jam sandwich i admit, and a roast potato that was going in the pig bin, oh and a couple of parsnips, and also a jacket potato that i put to one side and ate 3 hours later cos that was also going to go in the bin, oh and a spoonful of custard i scrapped and licked out of the serving bowl, oh and made plates of toast for the staff on their breaks, with marmite. Sometimes i sniff the cadburys hot chocolate tin and ask others to sniff it too, smells gorgeous. I'm not sure what to do with myself now, should i take myself off to the local jam sandwich police station and say i want 50 other sandwich cases taken into consideration. An army marches on its stomach, i see my colleagues at work as that army, if i am about to have a hypo i will have a sugar sandwich rather than faint on the floor. We do have access to a canteen whilst on duty but do not get a long enough break to get there and back and shove something down our throats to eat within 20 minutes, we can only gaze at it longingly and those lucky, lucky people sitting down relaxing, eating a meal. I also take food into work with me but sometimes it is not enough to sustain my energy levels throughout the day and a jam sandwich hits the spot. If someone cut there finger i would get them a plaster from our supply, absolutely. I once reported myself, after being reported by someone else who needs to get out more, for eating the scraps off the trolley, not realising that i also had custard all over my uniform where i'd missed my mouth gulping it down before handing myself in. She put her hand in the air and said 'i don't care so long as i don't see you doing it'. Good old girl she was. So guilty as charged.
  
  I also told all the staff who did a sleepover during the bad weather, snow, that they could go to the canteen and get a free meal, the canteen would not agree, so i said i would pay for it. My matron also said she would pay for it if necessary. These nurses also worked the next shift for staff that couldn't get in, some didn't get home for 2 days. This myth that nurses don't need food or water to complete a shift without dropping must stop. I wouldn't mind paying into a kitty or something for my jam sandwich, if needed. The we could eat it without all the angst. I also sit the housekeepers down for a cup of tea and a slice of toast at the weekend, agency staff are involved in this wickedness also. I even sit with my patients and eat my sandwich. I always tell the staff if you get caught it's nothing to do with me, though of course i know they would say i told them to do it and tell them to try not to choke as we eat the delight like a pack of ravaged wolves. I really can't be doing with this, so i will continue to encourage my staff to take their breaks, sit down with a cup of tea and marmite on toast and take the consequences at my trial. I fully admit that i am being a bad role model, and morally bakrupt on the marmalade sandwich front. The patients are never left out of the jam sandwich picnic as i shout out who else wants one? The condemned man ate a hearty meal of jam sandwich. I think i know the difference between a jam sandwich and stealing meds from the drug trolley.There aren't many perks to this job apart from our jam sandwich. There is always paracetamol available amongst the staff who bring in their own supply, we have enough ailments amongst us to keep 29 doctors in full time employment. I think there must be something intrinsically wrong with an employer if we cannot offer another person in pain some paracetamol, and as a last resort from the meds trolley, if that's all that's available. I understand that any system can be abused, has been abused and we are responsible and accountable and everything else that goes with the territory, but we are not all drug addled opiate addicts, just jam/marmite/marmalade (as a last resort fish paste urgh) sandwich addicts.

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• tinkerbell | 24-Sep-2011 12:14 pm

  oh and also when that 'terrible moment' happens and you find your littlun has come home with something in their pocket ( i assume a toddler as at nursery), you could give em a sound thrashing to help them on their way to understanding what a 'terrible' crime they have committed and that will stop them turning into the psychopaths of the future and becoming nurses. Might swing the other way though and they may end up with an overdeveloped 'guilt complex' and an emotional cripple, that prevents them from ever making any decision about anything and end up completely destroyed as a human being. Or on the other hand you could just let it go and focus on just loving them and enjoying their innocence and take them back to nursery and get them to hand back the lego themselves and spare them ending up a complete neurotic heap for the rest of their lives. It's a hard call. Why is life so complicated?

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• mike | 24-Sep-2011 4:04 pm

  Aww Tink, I am afraid that under the current NHS climate and under the edict put forth by this ridiculous article, despite your years of dedicated service, your highly valued skill, education and experience, the fact that you are a good Nurse who saves lives, treats people and cares for them daily, helping many through the trauma and perils of injury and illness, often at great personal, physical, emotional and psychological sacrifice to yourself, you are to be labelled a thief for nicking a jam butty and kicked out of the NHS without any ceremony and hauled up in front of a kangaroo court where you will be considered guilty for as long as it takes for them to stick something on you.
  
  But never mind, we'll start up our own Nurse led business in this new 'NHS' and you can come and work with me, (mags and steve are invited too), because you are exactly the type of nurse/manager I would like in my team! Regardless of what these idiots are trying to tell us is wrong or right!

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• tinkerbell | 24-Sep-2011 6:56 pm

  Thanks Mike. I actually also view my colleagues not just as 'nurses' but firstly 'human beings' much the same way as i see the human being before i see the patient. It is not them and us it is just us each and everyone of us a human being first, the greatest resource we have the body we bring through the work door with us.

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• mike | 25-Sep-2011 12:53 pm

  I do myself Tink, and it is a great shame we seem to be in the minority on that!

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• Yvonne Bates | 26-Sep-2011 0:53 am

  Well written Tinks and Mike!!( again! )
  I am more thn shocked to read that you were not given food for free when you stayed and worked in the freeze over there,I would have thought that was an automatic part of Employer to Employee care??
  It seems that humanity,care and compassion only lies with nurses there, and no one else in the health sector....surprise, surprise.
  Shall I ask our union the ANF to come over and take over there for a while and be known as UKNF ( United Kingdom Nursing Fedaration )?Only for a short time mind you....we need them here!! You and Mike can then run it....:)
  This whole article is insulting to nurses that sweat their guts out and then get sent home at whatever time.
  How can you be thought so liitle of....and yet do so much?
  UK NURSES DESERVE RESPECT. YOU ARE PROFESSIONALS...That DO care!
  
  

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• Anonymous | 26-Sep-2011 10:53 am

  I worked from 0700 to 1930 last Friday without a break. I took a coffee and 2 slices of bread and marmite at 1845 as I felt dizzy. Took about 3 minutes. Will I get paid £30 for the hour of overtime?
  If so I will happily pay for the bread...
  
  Time for a reality check here.

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• tinkerbell | 26-Sep-2011 12:20 pm

  Anonymous | 26-Sep-2011 10:53 am
  
  We have had years of being 'brainwashed' by hypocrites that what we are doing is 'wrong'. I think it is far worse to let another human collapse with fatigue than to offer them a slice of bread. That bread is going in the bin at the end of the day if not eaten. It would be so petty and cruel not to. Which is more morally wrong? I have years of unclaimed petrol expenses, my employer is not beating a path to my door to give me the money i am owed. Is that wrong? I've never given it a second thought until all this nonsense and just use it to highlight that 'fair exchange is no robbery'. Hope you get paid that £30 for the extra hour but in the unlikely event that you don't just equate it to the amount of bread and butter you could've bought, times it by how many years you have left to serve and you will have calculated the amount of bread and marmite sandwiches you have left to eat, and hopefully not feel so 'guilty' about the next time you have the barefaced cheek to sit down for 3 minutes and savour the delight of putting some food in your belly.I would much rather have a nurse who can finish a shift without collapsing or being ratty to a patient because they are going hypo. We managed to finish our early shift yesterday in good spirits on 2 left over yorkshire puddings and 4 roast potatoes, there were 6 of us. Most of us had come from the previous late to the early, so just enough time to have a lie down before going back to work and not much time to buy a loaf of bread on the way home and make a jam sandwich at 0500hrs before getting back to work. Have a heart! Along with demanding that our pensions are left alone we should demand a jam butty on a late to an early especially if you have worked 7 shifts or more in a row. Even if you are a domestic goddess it is hard to organise any thought for your own basic physiological needs when under that amount of pressure. Slice of toast taliban 'leave us alone'. Jobsworth!

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• Anonymous | 26-Sep-2011 7:56 pm

  I have very fond memories of a few months ago when our NHS fraud dept sent around an email stating that taking hospital paracetamol was theft. The consultant Endoscopist i was working with read the email then immediately declared he had a blinding headache and could not continue the list until he had some analgesia. So he stopped the list and walked into town to buy some paracetamol (after phoning the managers to explain what he was doing and why). There was all hell let loose as the patients who were waiting for their procedures all complained. Cue many red faces amongst managers. He made a fantastic point that day and we all loved him for it!

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• John RNA AFEN DipHE BA(hons) | 26-Sep-2011 10:21 pm

  Theft is defined in the Theft Act (1968) as the intention to permanently deprive the owner of the object, if you take an object and later plan to return it then it is not theft (which is why the specific offence of taking a motor vehicle without consent had to be created as joy riders could legally 'borrow' a car and return it without the owner's consent under the 1968 act).
  
  Cutting your finger whilst at work constitutes an accident at work and comes under the Health and Safety at work (First Aid) regulations which demands that employers provide first aid facilities, including dressings, to a specific standard. Therefore FAILURE to allow an employee to use a dressing could be illegal and very difficult for an NHS trust to defend in court (hospitals no longer have crown immunity from prosecution for H&S breaches).
  As hospitals don't seem to provide First Aiders at Work then we have to self treat.
  
  With regards to Paracetamol and other analgesics, the H&S (First Aid) regulations effectively allow unregistered first aiders at work to administer paracetamol under a PGD with the company medic providing the necessary authority ( I did this many times as an FAW in my previous life as an engineer). Therefore, there could be justification for a nurse to self administer Paracetamol from ward stock and it not be theft. Also, is it cheaper to allow Paracetamol to be used by staff (a few pence) or for the staff member to go off sick (several pounds)?
  
  The case of food that is going to waste is more difficult, who is the owner (for the purposes of the Theft Act)?
  
  

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• mike | 27-Sep-2011 0:00 am

  Anonymous | 26-Sep-2011 7:56 pm oh bloody well done that man!!!!! It's a shame most Nurses don't have the same spine as that consultant Endoscopist!!!!

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