A respected member of an ethics committee who admitted lying to bosses has been banned from nursing for a year.
Sandra Forbes, who has sat on the East of Scotland research and ethics committee for six years, moonlighted at a Perthshire nursing home “numerous” times between July 2009 and April 2010 while off sick from her role as a Dundee University lecturer.
She also made errors in record-keeping and lied about giving medication to elderly residents at Viewlands House in Perth in December 2011.
She was suspended from her lecturing role in 2012 and sacked two years later. This week the NMC banned her from nursing on an interim basis ahead of a full hearing next year.
Though Forbes has admitted her dishonesty, the ethics committee is supporting her, solicitor Eilidh Barnes told a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel at a hearing in Edinburgh.
NMC solicitor Yusuf Segovia called for a 12- month interim suspension to be imposed to protect the public.
The move was opposed by Ms Barnes, who said it would cause her client financial difficulty.
However, in light of the fact that in her role as lecturer Forbes had taught NMC ethics to student nurses, the panel decided a 12-month ban ahead of the full hearing was necessary.
In a written judgment the members said they were “mindful that these charges relate not only to Mrs Forbes’ clinical failings, but also to her dishonesty. The panel concluded that these were serious failings on Mrs Forbes’ part”.
The panel had taken her personal circumstances at the time of the allegations into account but had seen no evidence to satisfy the members that “the risk of repetition of this behaviour has been minimised”.
“The panel considered, in the light of the outstanding concerns in relation to Mrs Forbes’ clinical practice, that the public would be put at risk of harm were she to be allowed to continue to practise unrestricted.
“The panel therefore considered that an interim order was necessary on the grounds of public protection.”