A senior carer at a Southern Cross nursing home, who drugged six dementia patients with anti-insomnia, anti-depressant and anti-psychotic pills so she could get a good night's sleep, was jailed for three years today.
The patients, four women and two men, who usually wandered around during the night, often had to be taken to bed in wheelchairs after the unprescribed doses and were unsteady on their feet and suffered slurred speech.
Romanian-born Mirela Aionoaei, 37, of Pikestone Close, Hayes (pictured) routinely shoved two chairs together to form a makeshift bed during the night shift and drugged the patients to ensure she would not be disturbed.
"You were responsible for administering prescribed medication for residents suffering dementia," Harrow Crown Court Judge Alan Greenwood told the first-time offender.
"What you gave them were sleeping pills or pills designed to get them to sleep and once they did fall asleep they were taken to their beds in wheelchairs.
"You took their prescribed medication out of their blister packets, but did not give it to them and disposed of them elsewhere.
"You were in a position of trust. You were a carer of these people suffering dementia, unable to care for themselves or be conscious of their surroundings."
Aionoaei was convicted of six counts of administering a poison or noxious substance to the six residents of Ashwood Care Centre, Derwent Drive, Hayes between July 1 and December 31, 2010.
She moved to the UK in 2003, started working at the home a year later and up until these convictions had never been in trouble with the police.
"When she gave them the wrong pill and they fell asleep she failed to give them the right pill," added Judge Greenwood. "That makes it doubly dangerous."
He ruled the charges were equivalent to a conviction for grievous bodily harm and Aionoaei would be sentenced accordingly.
The defendant's most popular drug of choice to illegally administer to the residents was anti-depressant Citalopram and she also used the sleeping pill Zopiclone.
"She was trusted to look after them and take care of them and she abused that trust. That puts it at the top end of offending," said the judge.
Aionoaei's lawyer told the court no harm was done to the residents by unknowingly taking the medication, describing his client as "well respected" at the home with the responsibility of trainng staff.
"The residents were being poisoned, of that there is no doubt," said prosecutor Mr. Guy Dilliway-Parry during the trial. "The defendant liked to sleep when on duty. Why else put two chairs together?
"She was seen to administer on many occasions over a considerable period of time and the residents would fall asleep almost straight away.
"A sleep so deep they would have to be taken to their beds in wheelchairs."
There were twenty-two residents on the dementia ward - aged between 58 and over 100 years-old - and Aionoaei was the senior member of staff in charge and the only one permitted to dispense medicine as a trained and authorised health professional.
"They all suffered from mental health conditions that left them vulnerable and unaware of their surroundings," explained Mr. Dilliway-Parry. "They could do very little for themselves.
"Some would walk around at night and needed hourly checks, but Aionoaei would put two chairs together and go to sleep, even if the residents were walking around.
"Her priority seemed to get some sleep herself."
A suspicious colleague began observing Aionoaei because the residents only became excessively drowsy when she was on duty and she was keen to get them into bed only thirty minutes into her shift.
"She was observed approaching residents with a glass of orange juice in one hand and observed putting a small cream-coloured tablet in the residents' mouths and they would all be asleep within five to eight minutes.
"She had taken something from the pocket of her overalls and the drugs trolley remained untouched in the nurse's station.
"Other staff noticed the residents were very sleepy after being administered medication by Aionoaei. They would be unsteady on their feet and slur their words more than usual."
On January 31, last year the suspicions were reported to police and hair samples were taken from a total of nine residents - one at their post mortem - and six returned positive for the presence of unprescribed drugs.
Among them were a fast-acting sleeping pill, which usually works for six hours, a drug prescribed to patients with depression and panic attacks, which has a side-effect of drowsiness and an anti-psychotic drug used to treat restlessness.
"They were detected in the hair samples and had been administered over a considerable period of time," added the prosecutor. "It shows they were being drugged."
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