Locum pharmacist Gareth Daniel Vaughan-Williams, registration number 2227130, has been removed from the register after he was found to have “removed a quantity of Midazolam” – a sedative – from the pharmacy “without legal authority, prescription or payment”, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) revealed.
In a remote hearing on September 2-4, an FtP commitee heard that he had “injected a quantity of Midazolam into [his] body” while in the toilet at the pharmacy where he worked.
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According to the hearing documents, Vaughan-Williams appeared to be “slurring his words” and “unable to walk or stand” after he left the toilet and was “quickly asked to leave”.
The regulator accepted that the allegations happened on “a single incident” and that the locum “had apologised for his behaviour”.
But it stressed that there was a “serious risk posed to patients and colleagues” by him working “in an unfit state by virtue of drugs”.
“Unable to walk”
Vaughan-Williams was working as a locum pharmacist at Tiffenbergs Chemist, Liverpool, in September 2022 when witness 1 – an employee working on the same shift as him – observed him “go into one of the drawers which contained...midazolam” and then visit the toilet “three times within a 20-minute period”, the document said.
Both the witness and another colleague “reported hearing rustling noises” on his second and third visit and when he left on the final occasion, a “ripped up box for midazolam as well as a glass ampoule with the top broken off in the bin” were found, it added.
The committee heard that when he left the toilet for the final time he had “gone from normal to not being able to speak properly, slurring his words, unable to walk or stand, unable to focus and was bleeding from his wrist”.
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Vaughan-Williams “entered the dispensary and commenced work” after this but was “quickly asked to leave”, the document said, noting that he was staring at a prescription “like he was transfixed”, “swaying back and forth in front of the computer” and did not appear to “know his own name”.
A subsequent inspection of the toilet by another witness and colleague revealed an “empty ampoule, blood on tissues and blood in the bin and the covering off a needle, but no needle”, it added.
The document also said that around three weeks later, a third witness “found a BD microfine syringe with liquid still in the chamber, which was a type of syringe not normally kept on the premises, in the back of the pharmacy”.
“Egregious breaches”
The regulator accepted that Vaughan-Williams had apologised for his behaviour in his statement and acknowledged that his actions were “beyond unacceptable for what should be expected from a pharmacist”.
And it acknowledged that he had “complied with the health aspects of the council’s investigation”.
But the council stressed that the misconduct “involved an element of pre-planning, as the evidence was that the syringe found in the pharmacy was not one stocked” there.
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It added that he had shown “no remediation” for his actions and that there was “no evidence” he had “taken steps to try and understand his behaviour in order to address it”.
The GPhC determined that a suspension, even for 12 months, would not “satisfy the need to adequately mark the seriousness of [Vaughan-William’s] misconduct and the egregious breaches of the professional standards which the misconduct represented”.
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It concluded that his conduct was “fundamentally incompatible with him remaining on the register and therefore determined that removal was the appropriate sanction”.
Read the determination in full here.
