Nurse fined for professional misconduct

The nurse was sacked by the Waikato District Health Board following an inquiry in January 2011. Photo / Thinkstock

A nurse who used a district health board's fuel card to buy $1860 of petrol for her own car has been fined by a tribunal.

Ripeka Hinepari Edwards-Harris was sacked by the Waikato District Health Board following an inquiry in January 2011 and is now nursing in Australia, according to a verdict made public today by the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal.

The DHB complained to police, who laid charges in the District Court. She admitted the charges and was put on the diversion scheme rather than being convicted.

She defended the charges laid at the tribunal by a Nursing Council committee, saying she had the DHB management authority for the petrol purchases - but her defence was rejected and she was found guilty of professional misconduct.

Ms Edwards-Harris was censured, fined $600 and ordered to pay $15,000 towards the costs of her prosecution and hearing. Within three years of resuming nursing in New Zealand, she must do a council-approved nursing ethics course at her own cost.

She was a forensic court liaison nurse who managed mentally unwell or intellectually disabled people appearing before the courts in Rotorua, Taupo and Tokoroa. She was assigned a DHB Toyota Corolla and a fuel card. Her job was based in Hamilton, where she had a residence, but she described Hastings as her "home base".

A DHB internal audit manager, Ian Cowley, obtained petrol station CCTV footage which included Ms Edwards-Harris' own vehicle and her apparent purchases of petrol on the fuel card, the verdict stated.

He calculated, from the fuel-card purchases and associated odometer recordings, that the DHB Corolla's fuel usage was 14.4 litres per 100km, much higher than the expected 6.82 litres.

"That equated, Mr Cowley said, to approximately 82 litres per week rather than 42 litres per week for the total kilometres travelled by the fleet vehicle in that period; and the extra 40 litres per week is the approximate equivalent of the litres required to travel to and from Hastings each weekend from Rotorua or Tokoroa in Ms Edwards-Harris' own vehicle."

"The submissions for Ms Edwards-Harris acknowledged that [she] had used the fleet fuel card to fill her own car. It was said that she only did so when she used her own car for work-related purposes and that she believed she was authorised to use the card in those circumstances."

She said she did not travel to Hastings as often as Mr Cowley suggested.

The tribunal rejected her argument that she had DHB authority to use the fuel card to fill her own vehicle. The procedure for reimbursement of the cost of fuelling her car for work use was to make a claim on the relevant forms and she had not done this.