A drink-driving occupational therapist who crashed into two parked cars while charging her phone has been suspended. ‘Angry’ Christel Rogers was driving ‘slowly’ in a car park so she could charge her mobile when the collision took place.
She was charged by police the next day and later convicted of her crime. But she took eight months to tell health bosses of her criminal record, breaching protocol.
Rogers has now been punished by the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service, who found that her actions amounted to misconduct and her fitness to practise was impaired. A panel heard how police carried out a roadside breath test on Rogers between 10.03pm and 11pm on June 17, 2022.
READ MORE: Foreign Office urgent travel warning after tourists ‘wake up with no memory of what happened’
Don’t miss the biggest and breaking stories by signing up to the BirminghamLive newsletter here.
She was arrested on suspicion of drink driving and alleged to have hit two vehicles parked in a car park. Rogers said she was trying to charge her mobile phone and was driving ‘slowly to charge’ it.
A security guard witnessed the collision and called police, a report read. Rogers was charged with drink-driving the next day and denied the offence when she appeared in court on July 8, 2022.
She was convicted of the single charge at Birmingham and Solihull Magistrates’ Court on January 30, 2023. The panel heard that she submitted a self-referral form to the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and selected a box to indicate that she had been charged with a criminal offence on February 8, 2023.
In the form, she said: “I have been charged with drink driving conviction and have lost my driving licence from 14 to 17 months with drink driving course given as an option. I have to go to court order probation meetings once every two weeks for 8 months to include 15 meetings.”
In its ‘standards of conduct, performance and ethics’, the HCPC said healthcare staff must inform them as soon as possible when they receive a police caution, are charged or convicted of a crime. Rogers – who was at the start of her career – admitted that she had a criminal conviction and did not inform the HCPC in a ‘timely manner’ that she had been charged.
But she denied that this amounted to misconduct and said her fitness to practise was not impaired. Instead, she said she believed she ‘was not required to notify the HCPC’ as she was not working as an occupational therapist at the time of her conviction.
But the panel said it did not accept this. The report read: “In the circumstances, the panel was satisfied that there was a delay between June 18, 2022, and February 18, 2023, before Rogers notified the HCPC that she had been charged and subsequently convicted, and this amounted to a failure to inform the HCPC in a timely manner as required.”
It added: “The panel considered that Rogers’ delay in notifying the HCPC about the fact that she had been charged with a criminal offence necessarily hampered the HCPC in effectively regulating the profession. The panel considered that her actions amounted to a falling short of the standards expected of a registered occupational therapist.
“It ought to have been clear to her that this was a matter that should have been reported to the HCPC immediately and it was not dependent on whether she was working as an occupational therapist at the time or not. The panel considered that this was a core responsibility of a regulated professional to notify the HCPC of these matters.”
Rogers, who offered the panel a ‘letter of remorse’, was handed a six-month suspension order at the hearing in October. There was ‘insufficient evidence of insight and remediation’, while the panel said it thought ‘there was a risk of repetition’.
The report read: “The panel had no information about Rogers’ alcohol use. She set out in her correspondence that she was angry at the time of the offending and had herself been the victim of a crime, but no further evidence was provided.
“She also stated that she had been incorrectly advised by her legal representatives to plead not guilty and it was because of this advice that she had lost money. There was no detailed reflection from Rogers to reassure the panel that she had addressed the issues that led to the offending to prevent any repetition.”