Sussex nurse struck off for moonlighting while off sick (From The Argus)

Sussex nurse struck off for moonlighting while off sick

11:10am Wednesday 17th October 2012 in News

An NHS nurse who worked for an agency while claiming sick pay has been banned from practising ever again.

Carleanna Dunkley-Hauffe earned up to £200 a day doing agency work, three times what she was paid by the NHS.

But her cheating was uncovered after a suspicious colleague tipped off NHS fraud investigators.

They discovered she had twice claimed £70 sick pay from the NHS while working privately via an agency, once at St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester and once at Homebeech Nursing Home, Bognor.

Following a trial at Chichester Crown Court in 2011, she was convicted of two counts of fraud and sentenced to 200 hours community service.

A Nursing and Midwifery Council, NMC, panel last month ruled Dunkley-Hauffe, who had worked for NHS West Sussex for six years, should be struck off as a nurse.

The panel was told Dunkley-Hauffe, whose address in court was given as Collier Avenue, Bognor, had initially failed to accept any blame.

THE NMC report, published this week, said: “The panel noted the comments from Judge Wood QC in his sentencing remarks, in June 2011, that Ms Dunkley-Hauffe attempted to blame everyone other than herself for any problems that she had in the course of her work.

“In Ms Dunkley-Hauffe’s witness statement, she comments that at the time she found it difficult to accept her behaviour amounted to criminal actions, where as now, with time to reflect, she has come to understand the “legitimate interest which the health care trust were needing to protect”.

“The panel bore in mind that dishonesty is a failing that is hard to remediate; it was not satisfied on the evidence before it that Ms Dunkley-Hauffe has remedied her failing.”

Dunkley-Hauffe held posts at Arundel Hospital and with Bognor’s Intensive Care at Home team.