Bungling nurse sparks worries
A DIRECTOR at Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital has expressed concerns for patients in the care of a former nurse, who is now working in a West Norfolk nursing home, after a catalogue of his errors were revealed.
Claire Roberts, the hospital's deputy director of quality and governance, spoke out as she gave evidence against Geraint Wilcox (44), who was this week found guilty of misconduct in respect of three mistakes at the hospital in 2004 and 2005.
In one error, he gave a patient four times the correct dose of blood-thinning drugs and failed to report it to a senior nurse. The Nursing and Midwifery Council, sitting at the hearing in London, heard the mistake did not result in harm to the patient "but could have done".
Mrs Roberts told the NMC committee that the errors were not isolated incidents, saying Wilcox had been making mistakes at the hospital since the late 1990s and that no amount of training could make him safe.
She said: "My particular concern is that he is no longer in my jurisdiction and is out in the big wide world in an unsupervised position.
"I am concerned for patients in his care."
"I have managed staff for more than 25 years as a nursing manager and I have never before referred a practitioner to the NMC.
"Previous practitioners, with training, support and counselling have been capable of regaining safe practice.
"But I felt with Mr Wilcox this wasn't so – he has caused me considerable concern."
The NMC heard Wilcox is now working in a West Norfolk nursing home since resigning from the hospital in June 2005.
He denied misconduct at the hospital, but was found guilty when he appeared before the council on Tuesday.
And after receiving a letter from his new bosses stating they were satisfied with his work, the committee handed him an "appropriate and proportionate" five-year caution.
Mrs Roberts said in 1998 the nurse was given a final written warning after he cathatarised the wrong patient.
Then in 2000 he was demoted to senior healthcare assistant as an alternative to the sack, after failing a drug administration course – despite being a qualified nurse for nearly a decade.
He was finally reinstated after passing his retakes in 2001, but promptly made another drug error.
Then during a university training course tutors reported Mr Wilcox for failing to finish his portfolio and not attending work placements.
She said: "The instances brought to your attention weren't isolated – they followed an entire career of concerns expressed by my practitioners around competence, organisational skills, communication, insight, managerial skills, lapses in practice resulting in discipline and failure to achieve standards in administration of drugs.
"He hasn't benefited from the huge amount of support and training he has been given over many years. For ten years he was really treated as a perpetual student."
He had also deliberately disregarded advice from others, added Mrs Roberts.
Despite denying misconduct, Wilcox admitted the mistake in 2004 in which he misread a patient's chart and dished out four milligrams of Warfarin instead of the prescribed one milligram tablet. He denied failing to report it promptly, claiming he had filled out an incident form – albeit that he left it on an absent boss's desk.
Wilcox also admitted writing on a patient's chart in April, 2005, that they had been given Actimel – a probiotic yoghurt drink available from supermarkets. It was not a prescription drug and should not have been entered on the chart.
Wilcox claimed he wrote it in to appease the patient's family who were worried he was not getting the food supplement.
He also admitted changing the drug administration time on another patient's chart.
He told the hearing: "I didn't feel supported very well by the management. I'm now working in a nursing home and I've had no problems there – I do medication on a regular basis. I know what I did was foolish. I've learned my lesson."
NMC chairman Catherine Duthie said the mistakes were "serious breaches" of the NMC's code but did not constitute behaviour which was incompatible with being registered.
She said the panel had considered the background from Mrs Roberts very carefully, but balanced all the factors in the interests of both Mr Wilcox and the public.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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