*Ayesha Basharat, a nurse in the UK, has been arrested after she stole a dead patient’s bank card and used it to buy snacks minutes after the woman passed away in the COVID ward.
Here’s more from the BBC:
Basharat took the 83-year-old woman’s card after she died on 24 January at Heartlands Hospital, Birmingham, West Midlands Police said. She used the card 17 minutes after the time of death had been recorded, Birmingham Crown Court was told. She used the card to make six purchases of £1 each on the hospital’s vending machine using the contactless pad, police said. Basharat made a similar purchase later in the day and tried again twice when she returned to work on 28 January. But the force said the card had been cancelled by then and she was arrested during her shift with the card still in her possession.
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Hospital worker who used dead patient’s card to buy crisps refuses to apologise https://t.co/BcDQKcR1Gi
— The Sun (@TheSun) June 12, 2021
She initially told officers she found the card and confused it with her own, but they were different colors so investigators didn’t buy her tale. Basharat also failed to turn in the card – violating hospital rules around patient lost property.
Basharat was able to avoid jail. She reportedly received two concurrent jail terms of five months each, suspended for 18 months.
“They were having to come to terms with the death of a loved one from Covid when they found the bank card missing,” said Det Con Andrew Snowdon, who described the theft as an “abhorrent breach of trust.”
Per The Sun, a spokesperson for University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust told the publication that Basharat “was suspended immediately” after “this incident came to light and while the court case was pending.”
The spokesperson added, “Now proceedings have concluded she faces disciplinary action within the next seven to 10 days. Her conviction will be taken into account. She faces losing her job for gross misconduct. In disciplinary hearings past or spent convictions would be taken into account on a case by case basis when deciding the outcome but she has an active conviction so it is highly unlikely she could remain in our employment.”
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