Jo Faloona
Introduction
Jo Faloona is a dental nurse who worked as practice manager at a dental practice owned by Person A, a dentist who had known her since 2009 and hired her when she bought the practice in 2015. In January 2023 a Professional Conduct Committee of the General Dental Council erased her from the register after finding that over four years she used Person A’s details to order prescription-only antibiotics without her knowledge, that she obtained them for use outside the practice, and that she misled the supplier into believing the orders were authorised. She did not attend the hearing, was not represented, and the committee proceeded in her absence .
Background Information
As practice manager, Faloona had complete oversight of the practice’s email account and the ordering of medication, and the owner left the mechanics of ordering to her entirely, reviewing invoices monthly from the pile Faloona passed to her. The practice was orthodontic; apart from a mandatory emergency drugs box it did not stock or prescribe medicines, and the supplier only opened accounts for registered dentists. The scheme unravelled during the 2020 lockdown when the owner began checking the practice’s new email account herself and discovered a supplier statement listing Faloona’s home address, then found the account’s email and postal addresses had been quietly changed to Faloona’s personal ones, along with a string of orders she had never seen .
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
The charge alleged that on five dates — 7 September 2016, 23 October 2017, 4 February 2019, 20 May 2020 and 5 November 2020 — Faloona obtained the antibiotics oxytetracycline and/or flucloxacillin using Person A’s details without her knowledge, and that she obtained them for purposes other than use at the practice. The committee found every head proved. The invoices carried the owner’s name; she testified the drugs were never used or prescribed at the practice; a supplier’s accounts manager confirmed both are prescription-only medicines; and the two 2020 invoices showed delivery had shifted to Faloona’s home. The five invoices never appeared in the pile she gave the owner to sign, and the drugs were not paid from the practice’s account .
Much of the case came from Faloona’s own hand. On 8 December 2020, days after the owner confronted her, she emailed her resignation with a document framed as her self-referral to the GDC, writing: “Please find attached my letter of resignation with immediate effect, also attached is a copy of my letter to the GDC…”. The letter admitted “fraudulently obtaining medication without the knowledge of my employer…” and said the medication was for the personal use of a close relative with a long-term medical condition. The committee treated the admissions as weighty, found the orders misleading and dishonest, and held that she had gone to significant lengths to hide the matter, maintaining the practice’s name on orders whose delivery details pointed to her home “to avoid detection” .
Two further heads — that providing the self-referral letter to her employer was itself misleading and dishonest, on the basis she knew she had never sent it — were found not proved, the committee declining to infer non-despatch merely because no letter appeared on the GDC’s system during a period of known postal problems. On sanction it was nonetheless scathing: she had endangered the health of whoever took the medicines, “dishonestly exploited her position of trust”, and had continued trying to conceal the conduct right up to the resignation letter. Her last message to the regulator, of 30 November 2022, read “I wish nothing more to do with the gdc had enough of them. I have left dentistry given up my registration. Don’t know what more they want”. The committee concluded her behaviour was fundamentally incompatible with being a dental professional and directed erasure .
Public Reaction and Consequences
The GDC’s counsel acknowledged Faloona’s admissions and expression of remorse in the December 2020 letter but noted it was written only after discovery, and that shortly before sending it she had been changing the supplier account’s email address again. The committee gave the remorse limited weight, found a significant risk of repeating the behaviour, and ruled out reprimand, conditions and suspension in turn — conditions because there was no engagement to make them workable, suspension because the case showed “deep-seated professional attitudinal problems” of the kind the guidance says make erasure appropriate. No criminal prosecution features in the determination; the register sanction is the recorded consequence .
Current Status
Faloona was erased from the register of dental care professionals with immediate suspension covering the appeal period, the committee citing a real risk of harm to the public were she to practise unrestricted in the interim. Her earlier interim order was revoked. Unless she appealed within 28 days, the erasure took effect on deemed service. MedicWatch records the erasure among dental professionals struck off in 2023, decision dated 12 January 2023 .
Impact on Their Career/Life
The erasure ends Faloona’s registration and, with it, the career she told the hearings service she had already abandoned. The panel accepted it is a serious matter to deny someone the ability to work in a profession for which they are qualified, but found the dishonesty was sustained over more than four years, involved prescription medicines supplied outside every clinical safeguard, and was covered up in real time. A letter intended to draw a line under the matter — the self-referral she composed but the panel could not prove she ever sent — instead became the central evidence of the fraud it described .