Banned, NHS worker nine times drink-drive limit

A HOSPITAL worker was caught behind the wheel while nine times the drinkdrive limit – despite claiming she had only downed three pints of lager.

Celia Broadhurst had enjoyed an afternoon drinking session with a friend who had made a surprise visit from London.

Broadhurst, a care co-ordinator at Edinburgh’s Liberton Hospital, was then spotted driving erratically as she made her way home to Lasswade, Midlothian, last month. Yesterday, Sheriff Gordon Liddle told her ‘it was a surprise you were conscious, let alone able to drive’.

The 34-year-old, who had previously pleaded guilty to driving with 196mcg of alcohol in 100ml of breath, broke down in the dock at Edinburgh Sheriff Court as she was banned from the road for two years and ordered to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work. The legal limit is 22mcg of alcohol in 100ml of breath.

Broadhurst works with elderly patients and the court heard she is expected to keep her job despite the conviction.

She originally insisted she had drunk only three pints of lager but later admitted in court that she could not remember how many she had consumed and that her friend had told her it was three pints.

Sheriff Liddle said: ‘I do not have to believe everything I am told. She says she had three pints of lager but I am at a loss how that could be possible with the reading as it is. It is not a position that I accept.’

He added: ‘You could easily have found yourself in the High Court facing a period, probably into double figures, of imprisonment having killed someone... you could have destroyed your own family and destroyed other people’s families.’