Nurse admits decadelong stealing spree

A THIEVING hospital nurse stole up to £10,000 worth of items ranging from scouring pads to computers and cameras.

Toby Brownson began working at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 1994 and over the next 20 years he helped himself to pillows, biscuits, a printer, bed sheets and batteries.

He eventually came clean to the police about some glass lenses he had pinched 10 years earlier and went on to confess everything to his bosses.

A fitness to practise committee of the Nursing and Midwifery Council has now banned him from the profession.

The committee heard that he was employed by the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust to work in the ophthalmology department, which deals with eye-related diseases.

He confessed to the police in February of 2017 and no further criminal action was taken against him.

He then admitted to the department’s bosses that he also swiped things including tea, coffee, hand gel and a television, selling some of the property to pay for a holiday.

The committee heard he felt a “great sense of shame, sorrow and regret” for his actions.

After covering up his miscon- duct for years, he “felt a weight being lifted” from his shoulders.

Mr Brownson himself estimated that replacing what he had taken with new items would cost between £8,000 and £10,000.

The panel said in their conclusion: “The action of stealing equipment belonging to the NHS would inevitably cause indirect harm to patients.

“The NHS was, and is, finan- cially depleted and, in depriving patients of essential equipment, you put those patients at risk of potential harm and seriously undermined public confidence in the profession.”

The panel acknowledged that Mr Brownson had returned some of the stolen items, voluntarily confessed and shown “genuine remorse, shame and guilt”.

But he had also shown a “tendency to minimise the level of his dishonesty by categorising the items that he stole as obsolete,” the committee added in their report.

They said the case had involved a “serious level of dishonesty” and it was “fundamentally incompatible” for Mr Brownson to remain on the nursing register.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council is the regulator for all nursing and midwifery professions in the UK and the council maintains a register of all nurses, midwives and specialist community public health nurses eligible to work in the country.