Legal News
Prison Nurse Who Failed To Treat Ill Colleague Suspended for Six-Months (31 January 2012)
Date: 31/01/2012
A prison nurse who failed to help her sick colleague has been suspended from working as a nurse for six months. Rose Jolly ignored pleas from two worried colleagues who requested that she help a probation officer who was experiencing what they described as a shortness of breath and chest tightness. Ms Jolly dismissed their claims and told them that she would not attend to the probation officer, the Nursing and Midwifery Council was informed. Ms Jolly received a six-month suspension, following a string of charges were proved at her central London misconduct hearing.
Simon Evans, the misconduct hearing’s panel chair, told of how there was no question that Ms Jolly should have responded to the pleas of her colleague and that her actions amounted to misconduct. Mr. Evans added that a nurse should always try to respond in emergencies. The panel was told how Ms Jolly’s colleagues, Rita Heathcote and Emma Fairclough, rushed to her to inform her of an apparent heart attack. However, they found her to be attending to a patient who was completing paperwork. Ms Fairclough informed her of the emergency but claimed that she refused to attend. Ms Jolly later told of how she had been with an injured patient at the time of being requested to attend the emergency and had just received a delivery of drugs that required safe storage. Ms Jolly disputed her colleagues’ evidence but claimed that she would not have hesitated to attend the emergency had it have happened again.
Duncan Lewis’ employment law solicitors can represent clients at misconduct hearings.