A nurse has been struck off after her ‘devious’ actions of falsifying records to obtain weight loss drugs for herself were busted.
Sarah Jayne Didymus worked as an advanced nurse practitioner at Port View Surgery in Saltash, Cornwall, from 2021 until her resignation in 2023.
Her role included running clinics, triaging patients, examining patients face-to-face, reviewing minor illnesses, and conducting home visits.
As a prescriber, she was permitted to prescribe necessary medications for her patients.
But red flags were raised in April 2023, when the practice manager became suspicious, as a phone call from a Boots pharmacy queried a large amount of Ozempic being prescribed to one patient.
And over the course of 16 months, Mrs Didymus noticeably ‘lost a lot of weight’.
It ultimately emerged that she had been prescribing courses of Ozempic and Trulicity to five patients, printing them off on paper instead of sending them electronically in a bid to conceal her actions.
Then, she ended the course on the patients’ records to ensure they would show.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) further described her conduct of ‘obtaining weight-loss drugs at NHS subsidised prices’ over 16 months as ‘sustained, calculated, and planned’.
It found that, in January 2022, Mrs Didymus restarted a course of Trulicity for one patient with ‘no clinical basis’ before ending the entry on their medical record. They were given the drug in 2018 but had an adverse reaction.
The following month, Mrs Didymus prescribed a 12-month course of Ozempic for the same patient following a telephone consultation. Again, there was ‘no clinical indication’ for it.
Just 20 minutes after the prescription was printed, Mrs Didymus ended it on the record, citing ‘error’.
In June of that year, she issued another 12-month course of Ozempic for the same patient despite not having a consultation with them.
She printed a paper prescription, ended the course with the reason ‘didn’t use’, then collected the medication herself at a pharmacy.
According to an email between Mrs Didymus and the lead pharmacist, the cost of the items dispensed was £822.
In January 2023, she accessed another patient’s records without consultation, issued a four-week course of semaglutide, and collected the prescription.
Later that month, for the same patient, she printed another prescription for the drug before ending the record by recording ‘wrong PT’.
Mrs Didymus repeated this with a third patient a month later, and in March, added a 28-day course of Ozempic to a fourth patient’s records without reason.
Her actions concluded in April 2023 with a four-month Ozempic prescription to a fifth patient, which was also printed then cancelled.
The panel highlighted a ‘sophisticated’ and ‘deliberate course of conduct’ by Mrs Didymus, who ‘misused her prescribing authority in a manner wholly inconsistent with the standards expected of a registered nurse’.
Her actions, it said, ‘fell seriously below the conduct and professional standards expected’.
It added: ‘The panel was satisfied that public confidence in the nursing profession would be undermined if conduct involving dishonesty of this seriousness did not result in a finding of impairment.
‘The calculated and sophisticated nature of this conduct made a finding of impairment on public interest grounds necessary.’
A spokesperson for Port View Surgery said: ‘As soon as this matter came to light, we launched a full investigation and notified and assisted all relevant authorities, including regulatory ones.
‘The employee was suspended and then resigned under suspension. She has subsequently been struck off.
‘This issue occurred some time ago, and no patients came to harm.’
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