A nurse at Queen Elizabeth Hospital has been suspended after he caught stealing a prescription anaesthetic.

Olufemi Majaro was challenged by a colleague who saw him placing a white paper bag into his own bag. 

Inside the white bag were two unused bottled of Sevoflurane, an anaesthetic which is not controlled but is prescription-only. 

Mr Majaro told his colleague he knew what he did was wrong and apologised. 

But he then said he’d found the medication in the corridor and had intended to return it to the operating theatre, a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) hearing was told. 

Mr Majaro later admitted he had been trying to take the bottles but said “as ludicrous as it may sound” he had been taking the Sevoflurane to give to another hospital. 

He explained that his shifts at the other hospital had been cancelled due to a lack of that anaesthetic, so he thought if he could provide the anaesthetic he would have more shifts. 

But an NMC panel rejected this explanation. 

A Fitness to Practise report stated: “The panel considered your account to be implausible, in that you would find the exact drug in a paper bag which another hospital required in a corridor of the hospital in which you were working. 

“It also considered it to be implausible that any medication which you took would be utilised by any other hospital without any due diligence.” 

Mr Majaro had been employed as an agency registered scrub nurse by Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust for around three years prior to the incident, which took place on November 4, 2022.

On Friday (February 8, 2024) the NMC panel decided that Mr Majaro should be suspended for a period of nine months.