Why would one NHS Trust employ someone who had been dismissed by another? Even more bizarre why would a Trust dismiss someone as a nurse and reemploy them as a health care worker? Surely they have shown themselves to be untrustworthy and unsuitable for the caring profession and as such should not be employed in any post that has direct contact with patients.
A recent article in the Health Service Journal (HSJ) highlighted the issue of struck off nurses being employed in hospitals as health care workers. Nursing and Midwifery Council chief executive Dickon Weir-Hughes is quoted as saying “ I don’t think any member of the public would expect a struck-off nurse or midwife to be looking after them as a healthcare support worker.”….” “We’ve struck people off as nurses who have then come back and worked as healthcare support workers. There’s nothing to prevent them from doing that.”
Well there may be nothing the Nursing and Midwifery council can do about it but that doesn’t mean an employer can’t do something about it. Surely any employer who received a reference for someone who had been dismissed from their post as a nurse and struck off the professional register would not be offering them a job bathing, toileting or feeding patients? It is of course up to employers to enquire about any gaps in a reference and to clarify why someone left a previous post and if an employee lies on their application form to hide the fact that they have been sacked as a result of disciplinary action well that is gross misconduct and a sack able offence.
Dickon Weir-Hughes acknowledges that some nurses may have been stuck off for “technical reasons” the implication being that just because you are no longer permitted to perform nursing tasks that does not necessarily mean you can’t perform other tasks for patients. Well I disagree.
Presumably the thinking is that health care support workers work under the professional supervision of a qualified nurse or is that health care assistants are only responsible for the basic care tasks of washing, toileting and occasionally feeding! Well my personal experience of hospitals both as a patient and relative of a patient is that it is not the professional medical care that determines the quality of your experience in hospital but whether someone comes when you buzz for help to go to the toilet or get a bottle, whether your made to feel a nuisance when you can’t get a drink because the water jug is out of reach, whether any one notices that you haven’t eat your meal because you can’t cut up your food and how long you are left in soiled sheets.
As a senior manager in a local authority I chaired many disciplinary hearings and I know just what misery can be inflicted on to a vulnerable person if the wrong type of person is responsible for their day to day care. If someone is struck off from being a nurse how could a mangers ever take the risk of trusting them in another caring role?
Blair McPherson is a former director of community services in a large local authority. He is author of a number of books on management the latest being Equipping managers for an uncertain future published by www.russellhouse.co.uk