Nurses drugged stroke unit patients at Blackpool Victoria Hospital to ‘keep them quiet’, court told

One of the sedatives said to have been used was Zopiclone, which is potentially life-threatening if given inappropriately.

Catherine Hudson, 54, and Charlotte Wilmot, 48, are on trial at Preston Crown Court over the alleged ill-treatment of patients while they were employed as nurses on the unit at Blackpool Victoria Hospital.

Opening the case on Wednesday, prosecutor Peter Wright KC said: “Some patients on the unit, we say, were deliberately doped up with Zopiclone, or other similar sedatives, by certain members of staff in order not to treat them but to keep them quiet and compliant.

“We say the defendants treated patients not with care and compassion but with contempt.

“They considered them, or some of them, to be an imposition, an irritation.”

He said they would drug patients to “make their life easier and their work less onerous or arduous”, or on occasion would do so “simply out of spite” if a patient or patients’ family had irritated them.

Mr Wright went on: “The risks to the patients were obvious, but we say they didn’t care.

“They thought it was amusing. It was something which they would brag about or share as a joke on social media and with other members of staff who shared their particular brand of humour.”

A whistleblowing student nurse brought events she allegedly witnessed while on work placement at the unit to the attention of the authorities in November 2018, the court heard.

Mr Wright said a detailed and lengthy investigation followed into various activities at the hospital.

Hudson, of Coriander Close, Blackpool, denies ill-treating four patients and stealing Mebeverine, a medicine.

Wilmot, of Bowland Crescent, Blackpool, denies encouraging Hudson to sedate one of those patients.

Both defendants have also pleaded not guilty to conspiring to ill-treat another patient.

The alleged ill-treatment offences are said to have taken place between February 2017 and November 2018.