A former Bradford Royal Infirmary staff nurse has been jailed for three years for stealing pain-killing drugs meant for patients.

Emma Webster became addicted to pethidine because of pressures at home and at work.

The 33-year-old, who has three young children, began injecting herself with the opium-based drug after her promotion to Ward 11 at BRI in 1999.

Webster, known as Braithwaite before her marriage, substituted syringes of pethidine with those containing water.

In March 2000 she had to leave her job after she was caught stealing the drug.

She appeared before Bradford magistrates where she pleaded guilty to stealing and possessing pethidine and was conditionally discharged.

The following year she began agency work at Leeds General Infirmary and between 2001 and 2002 again began stealing pethidine.

Webster denied she stole drugs at Leeds and altered paperwork to cover it up. But the Leeds Crown Court jury convicted her of eight charges of stealing pethidine, five of false accounting and one of forgery.

Sentencing Webster yesterday, Judge Jennifer Kershaw QC told her: "These offences constitute a gross abuse of trust and a dereliction of your professional duties as a nurse."

The judge said she was satisfied Webster had been addicted to pethidine throughout her time at Leeds and had deprived patients of pain-relieving medication they needed.

"Their needs were swept aside and overridden by your need for pethidine," the judge said.

She said Webster's actions caused confusion and alarm among colleagues who wondered what was going on. She had also persuaded junior doctors to prescribe pethidine to elderly patients to serve her own interests.

Her activities probably undermined public confidence in the running of Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust.

The judge said that after she was forced to resign from BRI and pleaded guilty to stealing the drug she persisted in offending at Leeds.

Webster's barrister Jon Swain said the case was a tragedy for her as she would never nurse again.

"It was a vocation she felt from the earliest," he said.

Webster's jail term was devastating for her and for her children aged nine, five and 18 months, he said.

During the trial Webster's colleagues described her as outgoing, confident and friendly. But a ward sister at BRI remembered her as "excitable and giddy" and other staff said her behaviour on a personal level could be odd and irritating.

Some recalled Webster, of Warley View, Bramley, Leeds, pulling down the zips of her colleagues' uniforms but none had any criticism of her nursing.

In fact it was her self-confidence that persuaded junior doctors to swap morphine for pethidine.

A Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust spokesman said: "We welcome today's verdict, which comes at the end of a long trial that has been difficult for the numerous Trust staff called to give evidence."

He said the Trust had checked its systems for weaknesses and, as a result, had overhauled its relationship with nursing agencies.

On the rare occasions it used external agencies it was under the strict terms of a new quality framework set up by the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA).

"A specific policy has been introduced to ensure that temporary staff cannot find themselves in charge of a ward area."

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