Student dispensing optician Kirsty Brown has been erased from the registers of The General Optical Council (GOC) after dishonestly pocketing funds from Boots.
The student, from Rhyl, Denbighshire, admitted to thefts from Boots Opticians practices she managed during a nine month period in 2014.
Brown was convicted of fraud in March after making a false representations that she was entitled to receive monetary refunds to the value of £3,456.45. She also admitted theft after stealing £730 from the company during the same period.
Her methods were to credit refunds to her own bank card and retain cash rather than place it in the till, the GOC heard.
A GOC Fitness to Practise Committee last week found her fitness to undertake training impaired by virtue of convictions for fraud and theft from her employer.
The committee said: ‘There were aggravating features of the registrant’s dishonesty including that it was premeditated, systematic and persistent over a significant period and in different stores. The committee was of the view that the registrant’s excuse for her actions was completely inadequate. Although she admitted the facts, she did so only when uncovered and would have probably continued otherwise.
‘Erasure is the only sanction which will be sufficient to protect patients and the public interest, in particular because the registrant had demonstrated a harmful deep-seated attitudinal problem.’
Brown was now unable to undertake training to qualify as a dispensing optician in the UK. She had 28 days to appeal her erasure.