Care Providers HR Support Services

Background

This case concerns a Nurse who had been working an extra shift, to provide cover at a nursing home owned by her employer.  

The nursing home wasn’t her usual place of work and she wasn’t familiar with the other staff, the residents or their care plans.  Whilst covering the night shift, she made an error when administering medication to a resident in her care.  

The Nurse gave medication that had been stopped several months earlier and was not on the resident’s care plan. During the same shift that this incident occurred, the Nurse also raised a safeguarding issue regarding concerns she had around some of the working practices in the home.    

Spectra HR Services

We attended site and chaired the appeal hearing on behalf of our client.  The grounds of the appeal were that a fair process had not been carried out and the investigation carried out by our client had been inadequate.   

During the appeal hearing, the Nurse also raised the point that she felt that she had only been issued with a warning due to the fact that she had raised a safeguarding issue herself.  We listened to what she had to say and carried out further investigations following the appeal. During the appeal hearing, we were able to reassure her that we were totally impartial and that correct and lawful processes were going to be carried out and that we would speak to the other staff who had been on duty with her on the night in question.

The Nurse genuinely believed that she had acted in the best interests of the resident and stated that she had given the medication with the agreement of the Manager and Team Leader who were working with her on the night in question.  This was vehemently denied by both of them and so we had to make a decision on the balance of probability, taking the words of the Manager and Team Leader over the Nurse.  Even if she had given the medication with their knowledge, as a Nurse she should have known better than to act outside the NMC guidelines.  The most likely outcome is that the Manager and Team Leader would have been disciplined too, rather than the Nurse’s appeal being upheld.   

Following the appeal, we made recommendations to our client regarding the outcome.   We went to great lengths in the outcome letter to detail the further investigations that were carried out by Spectra HR and also to clarify that the reason for formal action being taken was not because she had raised a safeguarding issue, but because she herself had acted outside the NMC guidelines

Benefits to our client

This was an extremely high-risk case, concerning a long standing and tearful employee.  Our involvement meant that the Nurse and our client were both reassured that a thorough and impartial investigation would be carried out and that a detailed outcome would be provided to the employee. Although the Nurse’s appeal was not upheld she was satisfied that she had been treated fairly by her employer.