A pharmacy technician who provided a fake certificate claiming she had completed the required accredited accuracy checking technician (ACT) course and lied on her CV about being one when applying for a job and has been suspended for 12 months.
A General Pharmaceutical Council fitness-to-practise committee principal hearing found Hellen Jane Wootton provided Dalkeith Pharmacy in Midlothian with an “inauthentic” certificate which was dated April 15, 2021.
However, the committee concluded “there was no evidence the registrant created the ACT certificate or even that she instructed another to create the ACT certificate”.
The committee also found that on “a balance of probabilities”, she “inaccurately purported” to be an ACT when applying to work at Teleta Healthcare, the pharmacy’s parent company, between August 2023 and February 2024 by saying on her CV she was an ACT from November 2020 to April 2023.
Giving evidence during the hearing, the superintendent of Teleta Healthcare, known as KG, produced the CV which also claimed she had completed a ‘PDA in Final Accuracy Checking for Technicians” from April 2022 to March 2023 and a “Sqf 7 in accuracy checking for dispensing technicians” from February 2020 to August 2020.
That, the committee concluded, “purported to hold” Wootton “out as an accredited ACT”. She applied for the position through the job website Indeed but the committee said it had “no reason to believe” her CV had been “edited in any way”.
The committee heard that during her interview with KG, Wootton said she was not being paid the same as other locums and was “actually not getting standard ACT wage”, which the committee concluded “implied she should be getting the same wage as an ACT, thereby implying that she is an accredited ACT”.
The committee also heard Wootton’s undated application for an NHS email address cited her job title as ‘accuracy checking technician’ even though she was working as a pharmacy dispenser at the time.
In its report on the hearing, the committee said: “This application is likely to have been completed once (Wootton) was working at the pharmacy, rather than when she was applying to work at the pharmacy.”
KG told the hearing Wootton’s ACT certificate “looked like any other Buttercups certificate” and as a result, did not question it further.
The hearing was shown an undated email from ‘JA’, the support assessor for accuracy checking and support staff courses at Buttercups Training, to ‘Amy’, a pharmacist at Wootton’s previous employer Omnicare, which read: “I can confirm that [the registrant] did not complete the course with us as we withdrew her after she left your workplace.”
The committee heard Amy called the pharmacy manager at Dalkeith Pharmacy on February 14, 2024, to say she “had reason to believe” Wootton “was passing herself off as an ACT in her current role at Dalkeith”.
“The pharmacy manager was confused as (Wootton) had provided the pharmacy with a copy of her Buttercups Training ACT certificate and this was placed on the pharmacy wall,” the report said. “With hindsight, KG does not know why (Wootton’s) ACT certificate was put on the wall of the pharmacy, as she was a pharmacy dispenser.”
The next day, KG emailed JA a copy of the certificate and JA confirmed Wootton started the ACT course in April 2022. Her certificate was dated April 15, 2021.
The committee also heard Wootton contacted Buttercups on August 11, 2023, to say she was keen to complete the course in her new workplace and was asked to submit a change of employer form. However, the committee heard Wootton did not return the form to Buttercups.
“The registrant would have known in August 2023 that she had not completed the ACT course,” the report said.
However, the committee dismissed the allegation that Wootton worked as an ACT without being qualified to do so between August 2023 and February 2024 after KG’s evidence showed she only worked as a pharmacy dispenser.
The committee said a review should take place before the end of the 12-month suspension.
