Senior Nurse Jailed For Defrauding Employer Of More Than £10,000

A senior nurse has pleaded guilty to defrauding Southern Health and Social Care Trust of more than £10,000.

Cherith Douglas entered guilty pleas to a total of 12 offences - eight of fraud by false representation and four of false accounting, all committed on various dates between April 11 2015 and May 5 2017.

She has been sentenced to to 14 months imprisonment for fraud and a further 9 months imprisonment for the separate offence of obtaining employment in a private nursing home using forged references.

The offences related to when Douglas was a senior band seven nurse at Craigavon Area Hospital and then as nursing manager at a nursing home in Lisburn.

An investigation undertaken by the Business Services Organisation's Counter Fraud Service established Douglas was using her position as a senior nurse to facilitate fraud by claiming for duplicate shifts and for hours not worked.

Douglas was suspended by the Trust in May 2017 and subsequently resigned from her position.

Sentencing Douglas to seven months in prison, with a further seven months to be served on licence Judge Patrick Lynch QC told the disgraced former nurse: "At a time when the health service has been rightly praised, it's a great pity that a person such as yourself, an experienced and trained clinician, should find yourself before me, a reputation in tatters, a career in tatters."

Donna Scott, Assistant Director of Counter Fraud Services, Business Services Organisation, said: "The offences committed by this senior nurse show a blatant disregard for the Health Service and the public purse. Fraud in the Northern Ireland Health Service will not be tolerated and I welcome this judgement as it sends a clear message to anyone contemplating fraudulent activity within the Health Service."