An anaesthetics technician has been banned from working in healthcare after taking syringes of opioids prepared for use during surgery and replacing them with syringes of saline.

The trainee technician, who stole the opioids for his own use, was permanently banned from providing any health service by the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which found he posed a serious risk to patients.

The tribunal heard a healthy young woman undergoing an emergency endoscopy to remove a lodged chicken bone in February 2017 suffered extreme tachycardia and hypertension, after he substituted a syringe of saline for a syringe of the synthetic opioid alfentanil.

The syringe had been placed on the anaesthetics trolley in readiness for the procedure.