23 Jan 2025
Vet Times
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A Shropshire-based vet has been reprimanded and warned about her future conduct after admitting allowing a colleague to order medication intended for human use and recording false patient test results.
Emma Jane Evans told an RCVS disciplinary committee that she had felt “isolated” and “a failure” around the time of the incidents.
The panel deemed her guilty of disgraceful conduct in a professional respect, but stressed confidence that she had not “set out to act dishonestly”.
The case, which was the subject of a four-day hearing earlier this month, related to incidents at a Medivet practice in Shrewsbury where Dr Evans was a branch partner and lead vet.
She admitted allowing a nurse colleague, identified only as Miss JC in a newly published report of the hearing, to order fluconazole from a supplier knowing it was intended for human use in November 2022.
She also admitted recording false blood test results for a cat from whom an insufficient sample had been obtained in May 2023 and communicating those results to the animal’s owner.
The report said Dr Evans had herself reported the matters to the college in August 2023, having been directed to do so following an internal investigation.
During that process, she admitted being aware the medication was intended for human use even though it was recorded as having been prescribed to a cat, adding: “I hold my hands up and I know it’s not right, I was trying to be kind.”
Later, while giving evidence to the committee, she said she had felt “under great pressure … to keep everyone happy and try to make the practice a happy place to work”.
She added that, in the weeks prior to the false results case, she had felt like she was “failing her staff” because of discussions that had been taking place about the potential consideration of redundancies and further felt she had failed by not obtaining a sufficient sample.
She described her subsequent actions as “a moment of madness”, continuing: “It is something I am deeply ashamed of and is a decision I will forever regret.”
The report said the committee had received references and testimonials from 33 colleagues and 104 clients of Dr Evans, including one from a clinician who had interviewed her as part of the initial internal inquiry.
He said her actions “seemed to stem from a misplaced fear of failure rather than any deliberate wrongdoing”.
“This was not the Emma I knew from previous interactions, where she had always been conscientious and professional.”
The committee said the case was aggravated by factors including breach of trust, risks to both human health and animal welfare, plus an abuse of position.
But it concluded that a more severe sanction than a reprimand would be “disproportionate and punitive” because of Dr Evans’ mitigation, insight and the unlikelihood of similar wrongdoing taking place.
The panel said: “In both instances she made an initial error of judgement and everything that followed flowed from those errors. She had not acted out of any personal or financial gain or malicious intent.”
