A nurse wheeled a man crying out in pain into a store cupboard and left him there for two hours to stop him “disturbing other patients”.
Linda Jackson was working the night shift at a hospital in Fife when she moved the man, who was on morphine-based pain relief, out of his usual bay.
The patient, who had recently suffered a fall, could have been in the cupboard for even longer had another nurse not noticed his bed was “missing”.
Some time after 3.30am on October 2 2013, Mrs Jackson, 47, decided the patient was “making noises” and keeping other patients awake. She wheeled him into a store cupboard and left him there for up to two hours with no call bell or alert system. She propped the door open with an oxygen cylinder.
Mrs Jackson, who was working at the Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, faced a hearing at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) last month. She admitted five of the 10 charges against her and a sixth was found proven.
In the documents from the hearing, it states that Mrs Jackson acknowledged her actions could have been “catastrophic” and she made a “poor clinical judgment in putting Patient A in the store cupboard”. It states that, in hindsight, Mrs Jackson realised “the store cupboard was not an appropriate environment in which to care for a patient”.
Mrs Jackson told the panel in private session of the “very difficult personal circumstances” she was experiencing prior to and around the time of the incident.
The NMC panel ruled that a conditions of practice order lasting 12 months was the most appropriate punishment. It said her actions put a patient at “unwarranted risk of harm” and “brought the profession into disrepute”.