Nichola Hawes trial: Aesthetics nurse was 'stockpiling' medications, court hears
Mr McKendry that said while the clinic could have held medicines for specific patients or clients to be given to them during treatment, the way they had been ordered and the quantities found "suggested that they were for stock".Mr McKendry said that a month before a box of medications had been delivered to Ms Hawes' client Jordan Cairns, he had been doing routine checks on private prescriptions at a specific pharmacy when he noticed an unusual amount of B12 prescriptions had been ordered by Ms Hawes.Further inquiries at another pharmacy established that medications being ordered by Ms Hawes were being delivered to her clinic rather than to the patient, while a search of Ms Hawes' clinic uncovered boxes of medications without labels.He explained that under the Human Medicines Act and associated regulations, a prescription-only medication should have a patient's name on it, who and when it was ordered by, and the dispensing pharmacist.Many of the medicines found at Ms Hawes' clinic had no such labelling and while some of them did, Mr McKendry explained that under the Human Medicines Act it was only doctors and dentists who are allowed to keep a stock of medicines, not prescribing nurses.The trial continues.
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Metro
8 hours ago
- Metro
More men are getting 'scrotox' injections to stay smooth in the sack
Botox isn't just for the wrinkles on your face — and an increasing number of men are now getting it to smooth out a far more intimate area. Scrotox – scrotal Botox – is one of the decade's most-searched alternative uses for these injections, with over 46,000 online queries in the last four years. It's not just idle curiosity though; according to doctors, people are requesting the treatment in their droves right now, in some cases to emulate the bodies they see in porn. While below-the-belt Botox itself isn't new, it was previously only offered for medical reasons. In 2010, cosmetic scrotox was just a Saturday Night Live sketch, but by 2016 it had become a Hollywood craze, with Beverly Hills-based surgeon Jason Emer claiming he performed the procedure multiple times every week. Nowadays, non-surgical 'tweakments' are more widely-available, meaning scrotox is no longer the preserve of the rich and famous. Dr Mike Tee, senior doctor at the Harley Street Skin Clinic, says scrotox has been growing in popularity over the last 10 years, while Dr Abes, aesthetic doctor at ALTA Medispa claims it's far 'more common than most people think'. He tells Metro: 'Men's tweakments are on the rise, and scrotox is one of those things people tend to ask about once they're already familiar with treatments like Botox or fillers.' Scrotal Botox (aka scrotox) is a treatment where botulinum toxin is injected into the scrotum, relaxing the muscles and tightening the skin around the testicles. 'The main benefits are smoother skin, less sweating, and a more relaxed, lower-hanging look,' says Dr Abes. 'For some, it's purely cosmetic – they prefer the aesthetic – but for others, it can genuinely improve day-to-day comfort.' According to Dr Tee, a single session typically costs £1,200, and results last for three to four months, 'in line with many botulinum toxin injections.' 'Botulinum toxin is generally safe, with plenty of clinical studies and a long history of patient use to support it,' he explains. 'However, risks are significantly increased – especially with scrotox – if the injector is not a qualified and experienced medical professional (doctor or nurse).' Bruising and tenderness the 72 hours following treatment are the most common side effects, but in rare cases it can cause: Asymmetry , where the scrotum hangs lower on one side due to uneven relaxation. , where the scrotum hangs lower on one side due to uneven relaxation. Over-relaxation , where the scrotum hangs lower than desired if excessive loosening occurs. , where the scrotum hangs lower than desired if excessive loosening occurs. Weakness in nearby muscles if the toxin diffuses into adjacent muscles, which may affect their function. if the toxin diffuses into adjacent muscles, which may affect their function. Allergic reaction , including rash, dizziness, or anaphylaxis. , including rash, dizziness, or anaphylaxis. Urinary or sexual dysfunction if the toxin spreads too deeply, potentially impacting sensitivity and/or function. if the toxin spreads too deeply, potentially impacting sensitivity and/or function. Infection, although this is a risk with any injection. While recovery is typically quick, and most patients can return to normal daily activities immediately after treatment, Dr Tee advises patients to avoid sexual activity, hot baths, or exercise for 48 hours afterwards. He adds: 'It's important to wear loose clothing, keep the area clean, and take general care for the following seven days. Effects will begin to appear gradually, with full results visible between two and four weeks.' Like Brexit or mansplaining, scrotox is a portmanteau with the power to make half the population wince — after all, it involves a literal toxin being injected into the sensitive skin around the testicles. But while the thought of a needle anywhere near your crown jewels might strike fear into your heart, local anaesthetic means it's typically pain-free, aside from some mild tenderness or redness in the day or two hours afterwards. And for some patients, scrotox is actually a way to alleviate pain due to a condition called cremasteric muscle hyperactivity, whereby the cremasteric muscle (responsible for retracting the testicles into the groin) becomes overactive and causes involuntary, frequent and agonising contractions. It's also regularly used to treat hyperhidrosis, excessive sweating of the scrotal skin which can lead to irritation, chafing, and unpleasant odours. Scrotox can dramatically improve these symptoms, with Dr Abes recalling: 'One client mentioned it made a huge difference during long-haul flights and gym sessions – he felt cooler, more relaxed, and less self-conscious.' However, roughly 80% of the scrotox procedures Dr Tee administers these days are for cosmetic 'genital rejeuvenation' rather than to address a medical concern. More Trending 'We all have things about our bodies we're not fond of – for some, it's the scrotum,' he tells Metro. 'Unfortunately, people have become more conscious of their appearance, as both pornographic content and social media have become more mainstream.' He believes 'the internet has a lot to answer for,' when it comes to the growing popularity of treatments like this — although Dr Abes feels it's more to do with 'a real shift in how men approach self-care.' 'From skincare to tweakments, men are much more proactive these days, and scrotox fits neatly into that space,' he explains. 'There's also less embarrassment around asking for what you want, especially when it's about feeling more confident or comfortable in your own body.' While Dr Abes says he wouldn't recommend the procedure 'for the sake of it', he adds: 'For the right person, it can be a real game-changer – whether that's better comfort during workouts or just a quiet confidence boost in day-to-day life. If someone's genuinely bothered by how things look or feel, it's worth looking into.' Do you have a story to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@ View More » MORE: You need to ejaculate HOW many times a month to help prevent prostate cancer? MORE: Shock study results reveal Brits are less prudish than we once thought MORE: I spoke to a bra expert to find the best swimsuits for bigger busts Your free newsletter guide to the best London has on offer, from drinks deals to restaurant reviews.
Belfast Telegraph
9 hours ago
- Belfast Telegraph
Complaints to NI health trusts grow by 75% over five-year period, report reveals
The number of grievances submitted to Health and Social Care Trusts jumped from 5,005 in 2020/21 to 8,805 in 2024/25. The details are outlined alongside statistics published today by the Department of Health which reveal that all six trusts have experienced a rise in the number of complaints. It also includes information on complaints against Family Practitioner Services in NI for the year ending March 31, 2025, broken down by the programme of care (POC), category, subject and specialty of the issue raised. Over a quarter (2,406) of complaints involved the Belfast Trust, with 2,178 complaints made to the South Eastern Trust and another 1,634 to the Western Trust. A total of 1,180 issues were reported to the Southern Trust, while the Northern Trust received 1,092 complaints. The NI Air Ambulance received 315 complaints, while 745 grievances related to general medicine and another 550 pertained to children and young people services. The highest percentage of complaint issues (14.1%) received in 2024/25 related to the 'accident and emergency' specialty (1,243). Over half (4,718) of all complaints received during 2024/25 fell under the bracket of 'acute POC' issues, accounting for one in seven of all grievances against the Belfast Trust. The number of complaints about acute care has rose from 2,695 in 2020/21 to 4,718 last year. Complaint issues relating to Family Practitioner Services increased from 173 in 2020/21 to 272 in 2024/25. The median age of the patient or client raising complaints was 46 years. The statistics reveal that 59% of complainants were female and 41% were male. Health trusts issued substantive responses to more than two-fifths (2,455) of complaints within 20 working days. On a more positive note, the health trusts received 42,312 compliments in the same 12-month period. Just over 49% of them related to 'quality of treatment and care', with just over 25% pertaining to 'staff attitude and behaviour'. Almost 11% were from people impressed by the 'information and communication' within the health service. Nearly 3% related to the 'environment' and almost 12% fell under the bracket of 'other' subjects. It comes a month after the Belfast Trust appointed Jennifer Welsh as its new chief executive following the sacking of its chairman, Ciaran Mulgrew, by the Health Minister. Mike Nesbitt decided that a change of leadership was needed in order to mark a fresh start for the trust following a series of scandals. Health was marked as a priority in Stormont's Programme for Government due to NI having 'the longest hospital waiting times in the UK, with people struggling to get the treatment they need'. 'In recent years, pressure has increased due to both a rise in demand but also the impact of the pandemic on the Health and Social Care system,' it states. 'These have combined, adding to the backlog of patients awaiting care.'
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
Fat jabs are all over boarding schools. Girls as young as 11 are taking it
If you suspect someone has been taking Ozempic, or Mounjaro, or Wegovy, or yet another fat jab, is it impolite to ask them? A friend went to a dinner party recently and saw a woman she hadn't seen for some time. She was very thin, this other woman. Not that she'd been large to begin with (I know the woman in question too). Maybe a size 10, but now more like a size six. She was clearly very proud of this new slimness, my friend said, so quietly, over dinner, she leant across the table and asked, 'Can I just check, it's Mounjaro, right?' The slim woman looked horrified and embarrassed. 'Yes,' she mumbled back, 'but I'm not really talking about it, because I don't want everyone to know.' This incident provoked an intense debate at another dinner with a gaggle of girlfriends a week later. Should people be more open if they're shooting themselves up with one of these jabs? The majority of my friends are around 40 – some post-children, some peri-menopause, some doing endless weights in the gym because they know this is the age when muscle loss starts kicking in, some of us walking endless miles after our disobedient terriers as they go after yet another duck in the park. Bodies in all sorts of shape, in other words, so the fat jabs have replaced Botox as the topic du jour. I strongly believe people should be honest if they're taking them, because these jabs are – to my mind – creating another eating disorder. To be clear, if you're obese, if you're diabetic, great. But they're increasingly being used by people who aren't remotely obese, and the subterfuge, the lack of honesty and the renewed desperation to be thinner at any cost feels alarmingly similar to being at a girls-only school rife with anorexia in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Particularly because they're now reaching schools. I talked to a friend who works at one of the top girls' boarding schools in the country this week, who told me the jabs are 'scarily prevalent' among her pupils. 'Girls have ready access to money and they're getting hold of these pens or, ironically, I've overheard conversations where girls talk about going to their parents' fridge and just helping themselves to Mum's pens. One of them made a joke about her parents saying: 'Help yourself to anything in the fridge', so she did.' If these teenagers can't get them from home, this teacher told me, they have Apple Pay on their phones, linked to their parents' credit cards, and they're ordering them online. They use AI to manipulate photos of themselves – 'Here's a photo of me, can you make me look 25 kilos heavier?' – to override safeguarding checks on certain websites. 'They arrive in discreet packages, so the school doesn't notice they're coming in,' says my friend, adding that the sixth-form girls have fridges in their boarding houses, so it's easy enough to store them in there. Although, she's also overheard girls as young as 14 discussing using them. Or even younger. This year, a half-Russian, half-English 11-year-old arrived at her school with a prescription for Mounjaro, procured for her by her parents. She was overweight, but because this was a private prescription, my friend says the school had to allow the prescription, instead of – for example – gently encouraging this girl in sports lessons. Just 11, pre-pubescent, but being put on medication which influences her brain chemistry. If this 11-year-old girl turned around to her parents and said she felt like a boy and wanted to take puberty blockers, I wonder whether they'd be so encouraging? This teacher blames social media for encouraging their obsession with physical appearance. 'I heard the 14-year-olds talking about Ariana Grande in Wicked, saying she looks 'really good' in this or that video,' she says, referring to the American singer and actress, whose very slender frame has been much pored over online. Naturally, she says, they then want to be as thin as Grande. But she also points towards 'yummy mummies' with daughters at her school, and their obsession with losing 'half a kilo', thereby raising daughters who are similarly plagued. If you want to feel any more depressed, she says girls are now bringing pens from their parents' fridges and selling them to other girls. One of my brothers, an enterprising if mischievous sort, used to sell cigarettes for £1 a pop during his time at Stowe. This feels quite different. Are the staff at the school having any sort of conversation about what to do regarding this situation, I ask. Not really, she says, because a number of teachers are using the jabs too. I increasingly feel like an outlier writing about this subject, because these jabs are becoming the norm. A weird kind of norm, if you ask me, but a norm all the same. One isn't supposed to criticise anything that anyone does to their body these days, whether they're big, small, tattooed, pierced or whatever. It's not feminist to be unsupportive, many argue. But these drugs are allowing women who've always been unhappily obsessed with their weight to become alarmingly thin. Women who aren't large to begin with. Are we supposed to look the other way and pretend this is healthy? Plenty of men are using these injection pens, too, I should add, but they seem to be particularly dissected and examined and analysed among the women in my friendship group. Isn't it the same as Botox, a friend challenged last week while we discussed this subject (yet again) over dinner. Women don't have to 'confess' if they've had that, she argued, so why should a fat jab be any different? Why should women be continually harangued and criticised for their personal choices? I'm not sure cosmetic treatments are quite the same as injecting oneself with a synthetic hormone, though. I think the jabs are more insidious, because putting on weight is still deemed even more of a 'crime' than ageing. In the past decade or so, we'd supposedly all become so much more accepting of different body shapes than back in the Nineties, when my friends were busy starving themselves or sticking their fingers down their throats at school. Except we haven't. The fat jabs have blown that idea to shreds, and girls are doing it all over again. It's deeply, deeply disturbing.
