A pharmacist with a history of "erratic" behaviour has been struck off the register by order of the Statutory Committee.
At its meeting on November 16, 1999, the committee resumed an inquiry adjourned from March 19, 1999, into the case of Miss Christine Elizabeth Hay, whose registered address is 50 The Crescent, Cardiff Road, Llandaff, Cardiff.
The committee had received a complaint from the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society concerning allegations about Miss Hay's fitness to practise.
It was alleged that on occasions she had appeared to be under the influence of alcohol, medication or other substances and that her competence had been impaired on those occasions. It was also alleged that while employed as a pharmacist, she had regularly taken items from the pharmacy's stock, including phenobarbitone and dihydrocodeine, for the purposes of self-medication, that she had taken stock without paying for it, that she had left pharmacy premises unattended, and that she had supplied patients with quantities of prescription only medicines in excess of those ordered on the prescription.
In addition, it was alleged that Miss Hay had undermined patients' confidence in their doctors' professional judgment by making derogatory comments about the doctors.
Mr D. Bradly, of counsel, instructed by Mr G. R. F. Hudson, of Walker Martineau (solicitors), appeared in order to place the facts of the case before the committee.
Miss Hay was neither present nor represented.
Giving the committee's decision, the chairman (Mr Gary Flather, QC) said that when Miss Hay had appeared before the committee in March, she had surrendered her certificate, had undertaken not to practise and to keep in touch with the committee. No findings of misconduct had been made, the case having been adjourned.
There had at the time, said the chairman, been the expectation that a Health Committee would begin to operate. Such a committee, unlike the Statutory Committee, could decide that if unprofessional conduct had been due to illness it should not be equated with misconduct and lead to striking off. However, the Health Committee was not yet set up. Further, Miss Hay had broken her undertaking to keep in touch. She was in law still entitled to practise as a pharmacist.
The committee had heard evidence from some 15 witnesses, continued the chairman. Their testimony was in agreement that, over a period of years, her behaviour had become increasingly eccentric: incoherent, frantic, erratic. Her speech had frequently been slurred, there had been instances of drowsiness while in the pharmacy and the committee felt that that had been caused by the medication she had been taking from the pharmacies. When she had been caught red-handed taking stock out of a pharmacy, she had seemed to lack insight into what she had been doing.
The picture was quite overwhelmingly of a person who was unfit to be on the register and the committee directed that Miss Hay's name should be removed. He added that no application for restoration would be considered without a favourable report from a psychiatrist.