An unemployed man pretended to be a doctor at Brisbane's children's hospital to make friends and kept the deception going after starting a fling with a security staffer.
Nicholas Brett Delaney stole security credentials and walked the halls of the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital and Ronald McDonald House between May and December last year, Brisbane Magistrates Court heard on Monday.
But during his months posing as a surgeon, he never interacted with patients and did not steal or tamper with any medication, his solicitor Nicholas Hanly told the court.
Mr Hanly stressed the 25-year-old was there to meet people after losing his job as an orderly at a Sunnybank hospital. "The reason Mr Delaney went to the hospital pretending to be a doctor was to make friends," he said.
He was visiting the hospital once or twice a week in the opening month of his fraud but it was then that "the plot thickened", Mr Hanly told the court.