A mental health nurse has been struck-off after being caught trying to smuggle drugs into a north-east prison.
Hannah Louise Dagg was working at HMP Grampian in Peterhead when a sniffer dog caught her with cannabis resin and cocaine on April 19 last year.
The 28-year-old attempted to sneak the substances into the facility by hiding a vial of cocaine within her body and carrying two bars of cannabis in her shoe.
Dagg was apparently being paid £1,500 to pass the illicit substances to one of the inmates inside.
She was jailed for nine-and-a-half months for the failed smuggling bid at Peterhead Sheriff Court last summer, having pled guilty to two charges relating to the supply of controlled drugs.
Now the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has barred Dagg from the profession, following a hearing, claiming such a step was required to protect the public.
Dagg was not present in person at the disciplinary meeting, which was held at the watchdog’s headquarters in Edinburgh on Tuesday.
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A representative contacted NMC officials to tell them she would not be attending the proceedings and she would not engage with the procedure.
The NMC panel was, however, provided with a personal statement from the former nurse outlining the circumstances leading up to her disgrace.
It included details of working long hours to cover staff shortages and a lack of support as well as a reference to her poor health.
In the statement, Dagg said: “I do feel that I was treated badly by my employer, the NHS, in the run up to me committing the offence.”
And she added: “I own my mistake and I have learnt from it”.
But NMC officials were unconvinced by those claims and decided that trying to deflect the blame for her actions onto her employer, as well as a lack of remorse, were part of an “attitudinal problem”.
They ruled her actions put prisoners at a risk of harm and that she had abused her position of trust.
The NMC concluded that barring Dagg from the profession was necessary as her actions were “fundamentally incompatible” with remaining on the nursing register.
It said: “The panel is satisfied that a striking-off order is necessary on the grounds of both public protection and public interest.”
Dagg has 28 days to appeal the decision but if one is not lodged she will not be able to apply to restore her nursing registration for five years.
