Nurse gets job back, criticised

Press, 17 May 1984, Page 12

Nurse gets job back, criticised

PA Wellington A psychiatric nurse sacked from Porirua Hospital in December, after an incident in which an elderly patient nearly drowned, has been reinstated.

The Wellington Hospital Board’s reconsideration committee, which heard an appeal by the staff nurse, has given her her job back and four months' pa}’. In its decision, it says she is to be “severely reprimanded."

The nurse involved, was acting charge nurse on December 14, when she decided to help bath a female patient. She believed she left the tap running, as a rubber hose was attached to the bath tap, running under the level of the water, it was not noticed.

The bath kept filling until the "elderly, sick” patient went under the water, losing consciousness briefly. She was pulled out of the bath, put on a bed and resusci-

tated. The patient recovered from the incident but died soon after from unrelated causes. The reconsideration committee said it was important to note that another person, a psychiatric assistant had been given responsibility for the patient on that day. The committee said that dismissal was too harsh a penalty, but the nurse must bear some responsibility for her lapse in not turning off the tap and her involvement in the supervisory lapses. The committee, was also critical of what it called serious administrative faults at Porirua Hospital. There had been a long delay in preparing a report on the incident and a failure to obtain written statements from witnesses. The committee said the faults should not be repeated.