Several UK hospitals have been found to breach drug storage security requirements and no doubt after this expose all but the most laissez faire hospital managers will be checking on their security arrangements and bringing them into some sort of compliance.

However, security of healthcare environments requires more than locking up drugs and protecting patients and visitors. Peripheral to this is perhaps the report of a “police investigation into how a female patient allegedly stole used syringes at a US hospital and injected herself with the remaining drops of medication. 

“Officers were called to Springfield Regional Medical Center, where staff said a woman had damaged a sharps container by placing a cup inside to catch used needles. Nurses reportedly found more than 20 pieces of syringes in the patient’s room, a police report said.

Eye-raising for sure, but perhaps not unique. Waste containers are not secure and as this latest report indicates event sharps bins can be defeated. For those wishing to help themselves to fresh syringes and needles there is little to prevent a dip into supplies stored openly in a treatment room. Waste containers are insecure, and when these are removed from clinical areas the bulk waste carts are often left unlocked, or worse have broken or no locks.

Compounding this problem, waste carts and the various illicit pickings they contain will be pushed to a far corner of the hospital car park, left in access roads or perhaps into a waste compound that is almost invariably insecure (gated waste compounds are not infrequent but the gates are rarely if ever closed, let alone locked as noted in successive waste audits).

Sharps bins are a particular target as we have noted previously on the Clinical Waste Discussion Forum. Indeed, there is much evidence of theft of sharps bins from clinical waste carts of inner city hospitals for the drug residues that they contain and though this was at its peak 20-25 years ago there continue to be occasional rumblings that this is once again being seen in London and other major city centres.

Waste security is essential, and must be a part of the complex panoply of hospital security arrangements. Logically therefore, waste security must extend to the waste contractors’ premises, and prevent pilfering by waste handlers as this too has been recorded..