Nurse struck off after bizarre excuse for fake medical certificates

A nurse was struck off after giving a bizarre excuse for fake medical certificates. The nurse’s registration was cancelled after providing a dozen fake medical certificates.

The New South Wales nurse had provided a bizarre excuse for giving her employer a dozen fake medical certificates. The hospital put the nurse before a Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) which decided to cancel her nursing registration.

Karinna Payne had blamed a computer virus for the fake medical certificates. Her employer had been concerned over her “excessive amount of sick leave without explanation or medical certificates”.

Payne provided the hospital with medical certificates but various details did not line up. This included the doctor’s signatures not having the correct dates and the letters having a header from a medical centre that denied having provided the medical certificates.

The nurse blamed all the issues on a computer virus. Payne wrote to the Nursing and Midwifery Council of NSW and said: “It was an innocent mistake caused by a virus on my computer,”

“It was late at night and I also had to work an early shift the following day so I collided [sic] the information as quick as possible to give to work in the morning. I completed this and went to bed.

“It came to my attention a week or two later when I went to print something off my computer that everything had my medical practioners [sic] leader head attached to the documents.

“I then went and rang the computer company to see what was happening, they helped me fix the problem and informed me that my computer had obtained a virus.”

The tribunal said that the nurses bizarre excuse was “highly implausible”.

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