Addicted to painkillers nurse forged prescriptions
A NURSE at Rohais Surgery who forged more than 70 prescriptions over five years to get painkillers for her own use has left her 'career in ruins', a judge in the Magistrate's Court said yesterday.
Judge Graeme McKerrell sentenced 58-year-old Diane Poole to a 12-month suspended prison sentence and a 140-hour community service order and fined her £2,000.
Poole, of Prelude, Clos de Coin, Castel, used unattended computers at the surgery to produce the prescriptions using the names of her husband, stepfather and late mother, as well as strangers, and then presented them at other pharmacies.
She used the drugs to deal with her own health problems.
Poole pleaded guilty to five counts of forging prescriptions, five counts of fraud for presenting forged prescriptions to pharmacists and one count of possessing a class C drug, buprenorphine.
The offending started in 2011. She was caught when a pharmacist challenged a prescription and the doctor who was supposed to have signed it said she knew nothing about it.
Judge McKerrell said Poole had abused her position as a health professional and that her previous good character had made her fall from grace 'all the more spectacular'.
'You sought to cover your tracks by electronically deleting what you were doing, which only seeks to demonstrate that you knew what you were doing was wrong,' he said.
'You went behind your colleagues' backs in a deceitful way.'
