Aesthetics nurse was 'stockpiling' medications, court hears

An aesthetics nurse was ordering such quantities of prescription-only medications it suggested she was stockpiling them, a court has heard.

Nichola Hawes, 49, is on trial for alleged fraud and selling or supplying medicines, including drugs for weight loss and Botox, without proper prescriptions.

She runs Nichola Hawes Aesthetic Clinic on Groomsport Road in Bangor, County Down, and is facing 31 charges.

Giving evidence at Downpatrick Crown Court on Thursday, Department of Health (DoH) pharmacist Aaron McKendry said: "The quantity may have indicated that it was not solely for the person it was prescribed for."

Mr McKendry that said while the clinic could have held medicines for specific patients or clients to be given to them during treatment, the way they had been ordered and the quantities found "suggested that they were for stock".

Mr McKendry said that a month before a box of medications had been delivered to Ms Hawes' client Jordan Cairns, he had been doing routine checks on private prescriptions at a specific pharmacy when he noticed an unusual amount of B12 prescriptions had been ordered by Ms Hawes.

Further inquiries at another pharmacy established that medications being ordered by Ms Hawes were being delivered to her clinic rather than to the patient, while a search of Ms Hawes' clinic uncovered boxes of medications without labels.

He explained that under the Human Medicines Act and associated regulations, a prescription-only medication should have a patient's name on it, who and when it was ordered by, and the dispensing pharmacist.

Many of the medicines found at Ms Hawes' clinic had no such labelling and while some of them did, Mr McKendry explained that under the Human Medicines Act it was only doctors and dentists who are allowed to keep a stock of medicines, not prescribing nurses.

The trial continues.