A pharmacist who was suspended by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) and unable to practise for two years because of delays to her fitness-to-practise hearing before she was eventually exonerated has said the experience had a “dreadful impact” on her mental health and left her feeling “broken”.
Talking to Independent Community Pharmacist (ICP), Cerian Screen (pictured) said “procedural failings” by the regulator saw it take 12 months, from February 2023 to January 2024, to apply for an interim suspension before it imposed an interim suspension order (ISO) that lasted two years, from February 2024 to March 2026, while it looked into allegations, later found unproven by a GPhC fitness-to-practise committee, that she had prescribed outside her scope of practise.
Screen said the allegations and the time the GPhC took to wrap up her case had a profound impact on her emotionally and financially.
During the two years she was prevented from working, she said she was “too unwell” to find work outside of pharmacy and would have ended up homeless had it not been for an aunt who sold her house so she could keep hers.
“This has broken me. It’s been absolutely awful,” Screen told ICP. “I’m very fortunate I have a family member like my aunt, otherwise I would be homeless, I would have lost everything.
“I’d gone to the bank, I’d sorted it out, because I was going to sell my house. I’ve got a yard with horses. I was going to section off the house, sell the house and keep the stables and live in a caravan.
“My aunt said ‘no, don’t do that. I’ll sort it’. I’m on disability benefits. I couldn’t heat the house all last winter.”
Ordeal spanned over three years
Screen’s ordeal spanned an initial referral in January 2023 to a final determination in March 2026, during which time she was sacked by Talybont Pharmacy in Wales where she ran a prescribing clinic because of the unfounded allegations, then lost the opportunity to buy the pharmacy having put down a deposit and paid her solicitor’s fees.
“I lost my dream job, I lost working in a community that I loved and who loved me,” she said. “I’ve calculated that I must have lost probably in the region of £300,000, just in what I lost on the shop and loss of earnings.”
Her sacking from the pharmacy prompted local residents to start a petition to try and get her reinstated.
“Those people were prepared to stand in the street and protest for me,” Screen said. “They still would. A lot of them wrote testimonials for me. They’re really good people, a really good community.”
No misconduct, no need to consider fitness-to-practise
The claims against her related to 19 patients between March 4, 2022, and January 6, 2023, while she worked as an independent prescriber at Talybont pharmacy.
The hearing, which started on November 24, 2025 – 21 months after the ISO started – examined allegations that Screen knew she was not qualified to prescribe medicines, that those treatments were outside her scope of practise and that she should not have continued to provide treatment.
The hearing also looked into claims she failed to access GP medical records to get “a full picture” of patients’ physical and mental health, prescribed medication and addiction history and failed to refer patients to their GP.
The committee dismissed those allegations except for the last one, which it found proven in respect of a patient who had suffered second degree burns on their legs.
Screen redressed the wounds and prescribed the patient flucloxacillin, fluclox, fucidin, flamazine cream, co-codamol and ibruprofen.
The committee concluded Screen failed to refer the patient to their GP but noted in its report that she “recognised these were serious injuries and did not downplay this”. The committee heard Screen “repeatedly advised” the patient to go to A&E.
Sue Fish, then a GP at Borth Medical Practice, told the hearing the patient’s burns should have been managed by a “specialist unit rather than being repeatedly seen and treated” by Screen.
Investigated by the health board
A report into the hearing said Fish raised her concerns about Screen’s prescribing with Huw Evans, a pharmacist at the practice.
Those concerns were investigated by Hywel Dda University Health Board, whose former clinical director of pharmacy and medicines management Jennifer Pugh-Jones gave evidence.
The report said they were concerned Screen had issued prescriptions using the pharmacist independent prescribing service (PIPS) “which might be outside her scope of practise or outside the PIPS scheme itself”.
“Dr Fish noted that (Screen) continued to prescribe as an independent prescriber outside of the PIPS scheme requiring those prescriptions to be paid for by patient
which might otherwise have been free under the PIPS scheme,” the report said.
Pugh-Jones asked pharmacist Rachel James, who also gave evidence to the hearing, to carry out an audit of Screen’s prescribing.
The case collapsed
However, the case against Screen suffered a setback when it emerged during cross-examination that the scope-of-practise document used by James to audit Screen’s prescribing was “a flyer providing details of some of the services” she offered, not the more thorough document produced by Screen which covered her “areas of prescribing competency”.
According to the report, James was shown both documents during the hearing and confirmed “more areas were covered” by Screen’s document than the one shared with James “from a GP’s practice”.
Other allegations dismissed by the committee included claims that Screen called Bronglais General Hospital on November 2023 and advised a member of staff on the ward that she was part of a patient’s community multi-disciplinary team and that morphine sulfate should be prescribed in addition to Sevredol 80mg in the morning and 40mg at night.
The committee also dismissed allegations Screen went to the hospital two days later and said the patient was her husband and she was the patient’s pharmacist.
On March 26, 2026, the committee revoked the ISO having found no misconduct and no need to consider if her fitness-to-practise was impaired.
Screen’s case highlights GPhC’s continuing FtP struggles
In the months leading up to the start of the hearing on November 24, 2025, Screen alleges the GPhC “misled” her and her legal team by claiming the hearing was “imminent” when it was not.
When contacted for a response, the GPhC said it would not comment on individual cases.
Screen’s case is one of numerous examples of the GPhC failing to complete a fitness-to-practise case in a timely manner. It has failed to pass the Professional Standards Authority’s standard on timeliness eight years in a row.
A freedom of information request by ICP revealed four pharmacists who were eventually exonerated by the GPhC since January 2021 served a suspension that prevented them from working. The longest suspension was 1,339 days.
Screen said she is trying to restart her career as a locum pharmacist but fears she will have to look for work outside her local area because people will remember her two-year suspension rather than the fact she was innocent.
“The last two years have had a dreadful impact on my mental health. It has broken me. I’m not the person I used to be,” she said.
“I need people to know I wasn’t struck off. I am still a pharmacist. When you look at what people get suspended for…my barrister said she represented a pharmacist who killed somebody and he didn’t get suspended. In my case, there was no patient harm.
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. That’s what everyone thinks, isn’t it? I’ll be able to get work as a locum, I’m sure I will. I might have to drive down to Swansea or something but there’s a big enough shortage of pharmacists that I’ll be able to get work.
“But would I get a proper job locally now? Probably not, no. If I was looking to get a normal job in a normal pharmacy, I probably couldn’t get one.”
