Spotlight on managers at fitness to practise hearings

Abstract

By Sally Gillen and Christian Duffin A NURSING and Midwifery Council (NMC) hearing involving two former emergency nurses at Stafford Hospital has exposed a catalogue of allegations about poor workplace culture. At their hearing last month, nurses Sharon Turner and Tracy White denied bullying colleagues, transferring patients in soiled sheets to wards and falsifying waiting time records. Instead, they described how their concerns about understaffing were ignored. The two nurses worked as emergency department (ED) sisters at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust between 2005 and 2009, the period of care failings highlighted in the high profile inquiry by Robert Francis QC. Ms Turner is accused of five charges, which concern alleged mistreatment of patients, verbal abuse of patients and staff, racist comments about junior doctors, and repeated falsification of waiting time data. Ms White is accused of five charges, which concern the alleged transfer of patients before they had been assessed, verbal abuse of patients and staff, and falsification of waiting time data. Responding to the allegations against them, the nurses said they had alerted managers to staffing shortages and were required regularly to explain breaches of the four-hour waiting time target. Ms Turner told the NMC fitness to practise panel that staff were under great pressure to meet targets. She said nurse managers could use hospital IT systems to monitor what was happening in the ED even when they were at home and, on one occasion, a manager who worked between 9am and 5pm had phoned her at 4am.