Nurse has certificate cancelled
A New Plymouth nurse with convictions for aggravated robbery and stealing drugs in the US lied to get a job in New Zealand.
The New Zealand Health Practitioners’ Disciplinary Tribunal yesterday released its decision about James Stuart Middlebrook, who was facing four charges of failing to reveal convictions and lying to the Taranaki District Health Board (TDHB) and the Nursing Council of New Zealand.
According to the tribunal’s decision, Middlebrook was arrested in February 1997 for an aggravated robbery at a pharmacy at University Hospital in Arkansas, in the United States.
Middlebrook, who also goes by Jim, was working at the hospital as a nurse at the time.
While under arrest, police questioned him about a separate holdup at Tanglewood Pharmacy in Arkansas on Boxing Day 1996, which he admitted. Middlebrook was sentenced to 10 years in prison and released around 2007.
He also had his nursing registration revoked in 1996 after the United States nursing registration authority found he was unfit to nurse due to substance abuse.
He returned to New Zealand in 2012 and in 2015, he pleaded guilty in the New Plymouth court to ordering a prescription-only drug, Isoniazid, from an overseas store.
The charges before the health tribunal were in relation to a false declaration he made to the TDHB on July 28, 2012, and two false declarations he made to the Nursing Council of New Zealand on February 11, 2013 where he denied having convictions or being deregistered in another country.
Yesterday a man who answered the door at Middlebrook’s New Plymouth home claimed he wasn’t Middlebrook, denied that he had ever worked as a nurse in New Plymouth and said he was unaware of the health tribunal case.
He later confirmed he had been in prison in the US, but said the charges were trumped up and he had been wrongfully convicted.
He said he had tried to fight the charges, ‘‘but they don’t have a very good legal system over there’’. He didn’t declare the charges when he came back to New Zealand because he ‘‘didn’t think they were relevant’’.
In his declaration to the TDHB, Middlebrook said his nursing registration had never been denied or restricted, he had never been convicted of a criminal offence and he had been running a home based audio business and caring for his autistic son between 1996 and 2011. That was despite his registration being revoked in 1996, his conviction for the aggravated robbery and the decade spent behind bars.
In his applications to the Nursing Council for a certificate to practise in 2013 and 2014, Middlebrook dishonestly said he had not practised overseas, had not been the subject of any disciplinary actions, had not been the subject of any criminal proceedings and had not worked as a nurse since 1991, despite working for five years in Arkansas.
The tribunal said the charges were serious enough to warrant professional misconduct.
‘‘The practitioner’s false declaration omitted significant material from his application,’’ it said.
‘‘This conduct displays an alarming level of dishonesty by a health practitioner.’’
Middlebrook declined to appear before the tribunal and didn’t defend the charges, which the tribunal said were at the high end of the scale.
He said he had seen the letter sent by the tribunal, but had returned it as he didn’t accept unsolicited mail.
‘‘There is an evident pattern of dishonesty over a significant period of time,’’ the tribunal said.
Middlebrook was censured, his registration was cancelled and he was ordered to pay $7,296.90 of the tribunal’s costs.