A 'DEPLORABLE' nurse has been struck off for claiming more than £10,000 in unworked overtime at Ellesmere Port Hospital.

Diane Hyde, 47, of Mimosa Close in Elton, pretended she had worked on a string of occasions over an 18-month period when in fact she had been on holiday or sick leave.

She was a Band 7 registered nurse which came with a salary bracket of £33-43,000 in 2018/19, depending on experience.

Hyde denied the offences until the case reached Chester Magistrates Court on November 30 last year when she pleaded guilty to committing fraud by false representation.

She was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for a year, and was ordered to carry out 60 hours of unpaid work in the community. She was also saddled with £1,000 prosecution costs and a £140 victim surcharge.

Now the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has decided her case is so serious that she must never again be allowed to work as a nurse.

The Standard has seen a report stating the findings of the NMC Fitness to Practise Committee, which met on July 25 to decide her case.

It quotes the district judge at magistrates court as saying: “You claimed for these additional payments for a lengthy period of some 18 months before the matter was discovered. What you did was claim for additional payments for enhancements when you were on annual leave, and sick in fact, and those claims should never, of course, have been made.

“My understanding is that you started the frauds simply by mistakenly completing an application for enhancements which was then paid when it should not have been paid, and you perhaps realised how simple this might be and you carried on making such applications for enhancements, and you did so for a period of 18 months.”

Hyde, whose offending took place between January 2015 and June 2016, chose not to attend her fitness to practise hearing.

The NMC report states she was of previous good character and had almost paid off the £10,462 she owed by working as an agency nurse.

But its panel concluded that she had brought the profession into serious disrepute and that the public would view her actions as “deplorable and a serious abuse of trust”.

It said: “Mrs Hyde’s actions, as highlighted by her conviction, were a significant departure from the standards expected of a registered nurse and involved fraudulently procuring a large amount of money from the public purse over a significant period of time.

“The panel considered that Mrs Hyde’s prolonged and serious dishonesty was a breach of a fundamental tenet of the profession and was fundamentally incompatible with her remaining on the register.”

It continued: “There was no evidence that Mrs Hyde understood the impact that her conviction has had on not only the reputation of the nursing profession but also her colleagues and the public.

“Further, the panel had no evidence that Mrs Hyde had demonstrated any remorse for her actions. She had denied the fraudulent claims throughout the investigation conducted by her employer and had not admitted them until the hearing at the Magistrates Court.”

The report says that Hyde no longer wishes to practice as a nurse. She has a right to appeal against the NMC panel’s decision but will not be able to work while the process is ongoing.

If no appeal is lodged she will be struck off the nursing register within a month.