NHS scientist faked case of salmonella to get time off

♦ A biomedical scientist who hated day shifts spiked his own stool samples with salmonella to convince bosses he needed time off.

Bernard Watkins, 48, staged his sickness in order to get out of NHS day shifts at the Cwm Taf University Health Board in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, because he preferred night work.

While at work in October 2016, he went into a freezer in his laboratory to take a patient’s faeces, which had tested positive for salmonella, a Health and Care Professions Council standards hearing in Cardiff was told.

He added the infected stool sample to his own in a bid to fake a claim that he was ill with food poisoning, then phoned into work to say that he was unwell with diarrhoea and vomiting, having been tested positive for salmonella.

He came clean about the contamination after his manager phoned to ask for another sample from his GP.

The panel struck him off the medical register.