Paramedic high on gas
A paramedic was found face down in the back of her ambulance after taking laughing gas meant for patients.
Lyndsay Pegg, of Penkridge, Staffordshire, was caught high on the drug while on duty after crews noticed stocks were depleting, a misconduct hearing was told. She has since been sacked from her job.
On one occasion, she took a Cannock patient to Stafford Hospital instead of Walsall Manor Hospital, but insisted it was down to a simple error.
Yesterday, Pegg suspended from working as a paramedic for a year.
On June 7, 2003, she was found lying face down by a colleague at Lichfield Ambulance Station and was later seen tumbling out the back of her ambulance soaked in sweat.
Pegg, now a parking attendant in Lichfield, joined Staffordshire Ambulance Service as an ambulance technician in 1996.
She said had taken the gas because she was not sleeping well, for headaches and to help her deal with work and personal problems.Pegg insisted she would not be so stupid again and was given a final written warning.
But on April 24, 2008, Pegg, – by then a qualified paramedic – she was found high on the gas again, lying face-down on a stretcher.
Later the same day, she was discovered in the same position at the back of the vehicle by another member of staff at the Stafford depot.Pegg said she had taken it for severe abdominal pains.
She was dismissed four months later.
On medication for depression, Pegg told the hearing she hit "rock bottom" after her dismissal and turned to booze and started seeing a psychiatrist for help, but insisted she had now stopped binge-drinking and was committed to returning to the profession.
Charged with self-administering a quantity of entonox – often given to women in labour – and breaching ambulance service policy and procedures, she appeared before a fitness to practise panel at the Health Professionals Council in London yesterday.
Asked by chairman Nicola Bastin what the repercussions of a cocktail of potent painkiller and her medication could have been, Pegg conceded she could have crashed an ambulance.
Melinka Berridge, representing the HPC, argued that Pegg's fitness to practise as a paramedic was impaired, posing a risk to patients, colleagues and other staff.
