Jade Elizabeth Meakin
Introduction
Jade Elizabeth Meakin is a dental hygienist and dental therapist whom a GDC Professional Conduct Committee erased from the register in October 2022 after she was convicted of making four false instruments — forged prescriptions for the anti-wrinkle drug Azzalure — bearing the forged signature of a dentist she had previously worked with. The committee described the offending as “high-level premeditated fraud, repeated on four occasions” and rejected her explanation for it as an attempt to minimise or cover up her criminal conduct .
Background Information
Meakin qualified in 2016 and first registered with the GDC as a dental hygienist and dental therapist in January 2017. As a dental care professional in those roles she held no prescription rights of any kind. The conduct leading to her conviction involved four prescriptions dated 4 November 2020, 24 November 2020, 2 December 2020 and 13 January 2021, each recording two vials of Azzalure for “Glabellar Lines”, with the November prescription also including sodium chloride solution to constitute the drug. Each purported to be issued and signed by a dentist — the informant in the case — with whom she had previously worked .
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Each forged prescription contained details of a dental practice where Meakin was working and with which the informant had no connection, and purported to follow face-to-face consultations with four different patients. The determination records that Meakin had forged the prescriptions, including the handwritten signatures purporting to be those of the informant. What happened to the dispensed vials remains unknown: the committee noted it was unclear what purpose the forgery served and whether the medicine was administered, to whom, or in what circumstances. It was likewise not known whether the named patients were fictitious .
On 15 July 2021 Meakin was convicted at West Yorkshire Magistrates’ Court of the offence of having made four false instruments, namely a prescription for a scheduled drug, with the intention that she or another should use it to induce another to accept it as genuine. The GDC hearing into the conviction opened on 24 October 2022; Meakin was neither present nor represented, and the committee proceeded in her absence after being satisfied about proof of service .
Meakin’s explanation — first to the investigating committee and then to the Professional Conduct Committee — was that the earlier forgeries were to obtain the medicine for her personal use and the later ones simply to help a dentist obtain Azzalure for his patients during Covid-19 supply problems. The committee could find “no rational or logical basis” for that account, observing that it made no sense for two dental professionals to resort to forgery when the dentist could easily have prescribed in his own name, and concluded the explanation was an attempt to minimise or cover up her criminal conduct .
Public Reaction and Consequences
The committee characterised the offending as not one isolated incident but a course of conduct perpetrated on four occasions over several weeks, involving the use of her position to forge prescriptions in order to obtain a prescription-only medicine. It called the forgery sophisticated and described the scheme as high-level premeditated fraud. MedicWatch’s record of the case notes the Professional Conduct Committee decision and its direction of erasure from the dental register following the October 2022 hearing .
Current Status
Meakin was erased from the registers of both dental hygienist and dental therapist titles. The committee imposed an immediate suspension order under the Dentists Act 1984, noting it would be inconsistent with its decision not to do so; her name would be erased 28 days after service of the order unless she appealed, with the immediate suspension remaining in force pending any appeal. MedicWatch lists her among dental professionals struck off in 2022 with the erasure outcome recorded against her determination page . No appeal outcome appears in the published record .
Impact on Their Career/Life
A conviction for forging prescriptions, combined with findings of sustained dishonesty and a rejected mitigation account, ended Meakin’s registration across both of her professional titles within six years of qualifying. The committee’s view that her offending involved abusing her registration to obtain prescription-only medicine — with the fate of the drug never established — is the kind of finding that makes restoration applications unlikely to succeed. The published determination records the immediate suspension as necessary for public protection .