A Surrey nurse has been struck off after faking medical letters from a deceased doctor to try and secure a child a school place. She then threatened a staff member who reported her.

Johanna Phillips was removed from the nursing register after a Nursing and Midwifery Committee (NMC) ruled she acted dishonestly, failed to take responsibility for her actions and failed to show genuine remorse.

The NMC disciplinary panel said her behaviour seriously damaged public trust and raised “fundamental questions” about her professionalism, even though this was outside of her professional clinical practice. The panel agreed and said her behaviour could not be fixed through retraining and was “fundamentally incompatible” with staying in nursing.

The case emerged in May 2022 when a school medical centre manager spotted a letter supposedly written by a doctor who had died a year earlier. The letter, dated April 2022, was in the name of Dr A (as described in the report) who passed away in March 2021.

Police were informed but took no further action. However, an NMC investigation found Ms Phillips had altered an old medical letter from 2017, changed dates, created a new fake document and submitted both to (as named in the report) Child 1’s school.

The panel found all six charges against the Surrey nurse proved, including dishonesty and attempting to intimidate a member of school staff.

During a police interview, Ms Phillips admitted changing the dates, saying she was “stressed” and “running out of options”.

In a reflective statement written in 2023, she said panic and desperation drove her to falsify documents: “It was at this point, in my desperation, fear, panic and feeling under pressure to get [Child 1] a secured school space that I made the first edit of [Dr A]’s letter passing it off as an original, prior to [Child 1] starting.”

But later Ms Phillips retracted those admissions, claiming she had been pressured by her solicitor. The panel said this claim was undermined by her own emails praising that same lawyer. The panel said her story was “inconsistent”. They concluded her original admissions were more believable.

“She deliberately altered important medical information to mislead the school,” the ruling said. “An ordinary person would consider her actions dishonest.”

The hearing also heard how Ms Phillips confronted a school staff member after the letters were reported and threatened to “ruin” her and make her “pay”. The witness said she felt scared and intimidated, and the school even gave her a walkie-talkie so she could call for help if Ms Phillips returned.

Despite the seriousness of her actions, the panel said she failed to take meaningful steps to improve her behaviour or demonstrate real insight. They said her refusal to fully accept responsibility and her attempts to blame others showed the concerns had not been addressed.

While the panel accepted the incident happened during a difficult personal period and outside her clinical role, they warned forging medical documents could have left the school with an incomplete picture of a child’s needs.

However, their main focus was the damage done to public trust. “Confidence in the nursing profession would be undermined if this kind of behaviour was not treated seriously,” they said. As a result, they found her fitness to practise was impaired both to protect the public and in the wider public interest.

Presenting the case, NMC lawyer Ms Barnor said Ms Philips had no previous disciplinary record and no concerns had ever been raised about her clinical skills.

But she said the deception was “premeditated, calculated and sustained”. Ms Barnor argued allowing her to stay on the register would seriously damage public confidence in both the profession and its regulator.

“The dishonesty involved forging the name of a deceased doctor,” the panel said. “This was a deliberate attempt to mislead, motivated by personal gain.”

Ms Philips has now been formally struck off and can no longer work as, or present herself as, a registered nurse. An interim order is being considered while she has 28 days to appeal.