Sarah Jayne Didymus issued prescriptions for Ozempic and Trulicity in five patients’ names and hid them in their records. The Nursing and Midwifery Council called her conduct “sustained, calculated, and planned”.
A nurse has been struck off after falsifying patient records to obtain weight-loss drugs for herself at NHS-subsidised prices. Sarah Jayne Didymus worked as an advanced nurse practitioner at Port View Surgery in Saltash, Cornwall, from 2021 until she resigned in 2023. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) found she prescribed Ozempic and Trulicity in the names of five patients, printed the prescriptions on paper to avoid electronic trails, and then ended the courses on the records. The panel described a “sophisticated” and “deliberate course of conduct”.
How the scheme unfolded
Ms Didymus’s role included running clinics, triaging patients, examining them face to face, reviewing minor illnesses and carrying out home visits. As a prescriber, she could issue the medicines her patients needed. Suspicion arose in April 2023, when the practice manager took a call from a Boots pharmacy querying a large quantity of Ozempic prescribed to one patient. Over 16 months, colleagues noticed that she had “lost a lot of weight”.
The NMC found that she printed prescriptions on paper and then closed the courses on patients’ records so they would not show. It described her conduct of “obtaining weight-loss drugs at NHS subsidised prices” over 16 months as “sustained, calculated, and planned”.
The panel set out how the conduct developed:
- January 2022: She restarted a course of Trulicity for one patient with “no clinical basis”, then ended the entry. The patient had been given the drug in 2018 but had an adverse reaction.
- The following month: She prescribed the same patient a 12-month course of Ozempic after a telephone consultation, again with “no clinical indication”. Twenty minutes after printing the prescription, she ended it on the record, citing “error”.
- June 2022: She issued another 12-month Ozempic course for the same patient without a consultation. She printed a paper prescription, ended the course with the reason “didn’t use” and collected the medicine herself from a pharmacy. An email between her and the lead pharmacist put the cost at £822.
- January 2023: She accessed another patient’s records without a consultation, issued a four-week course of semaglutide and collected it. Later that month she printed another prescription for the same patient and ended the record by entering “wrong PT”.
- February to April 2023: She repeated the pattern with a third patient, added a 28-day Ozempic course to a fourth patient’s records without reason in March, and in April issued a four-month Ozempic prescription to a fifth patient, which was also printed and then cancelled.
The panel said she “misused her prescribing authority in a manner wholly inconsistent with the standards expected of a registered nurse”, and that her actions “fell seriously below the conduct and professional standards expected”. It added: “The panel was satisfied that public confidence in the nursing profession would be undermined if conduct involving dishonesty of this seriousness did not result in a finding of impairment.”
Admissions and the investigation
The research notes, drawn from the NMC’s 55-page judgment dated 16 October 2026, say Ms Didymus accepted at an investigative meeting on 24 May 2023 that she had issued prescriptions for personal use and that some record entries concealed this. She produced a paper prescription from her handbag after saying she had destroyed it. It had been prepared about two months earlier in another patient’s name. She said she used paper prescriptions partly because they gave her a chance to change her mind.
The Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board had already queried high-value Ozempic prescribing in August 2022, according to the notes. Ms Didymus agreed to add a note restricting further prescriptions for one patient but did not do so. The practice manager contacted an ICB pharmaceutical adviser on 2 May 2023, and three prescriptions of concern were found to have been dispensed. She was confronted and suspended by the surgery on 19 May 2023.
The evidence did not identify any adverse effect on the five patients, the notes say. The practice concluded they did not need to be told individually. That does not lessen the seriousness of the misuse of their records.
The hearing and sanction
Ms Didymus did not attend the five-day hearing, held from 12 to 16 October 2026, and was not legally represented. She had told the regulator she wanted to leave the register. The panel proceeded without her but said it would not draw adverse conclusions simply from her absence. All 27 numbered charges were found proved on the balance of probabilities.
She had been on an interim suspension since June 2023, and an earlier application to be removed from the register by agreement was unsuccessful. The panel found no evidence that she had addressed the underlying misconduct or shown she was unlikely to repeat it, despite about three years passing. She had no earlier fitness-to-practise history, but the panel judged that insufficient to outweigh its concerns. The NMC also imposed an 18-month interim suspension, which protects the public until the striking-off order takes effect.
It has not been established whether police have investigated, how much the prescriptions cost in total, whether the NHS has recovered any money, or whether she has appealed.
