10:00am Sunday 25th July 2010
A nurse who left an elderly lady with a gaping head wound for more than seven hours before calling an ambulance has been suspended for 12 months.
The 89-year-old dementia sufferer fell down a flight of stairs during the night at the Crown Nursing Home in Harwell, near Didcot, and died five days later.
Nurse Nonhlanhla Kubheka, 62, had contacted the care home manager at 4am but left her with the impression that the woman’s injuries were ‘not sufficiently serious’.
It was not until 10.30am, when a colleague discovered that the pensioner was bleeding profusely from her wound, that an ambulance was finally called, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard this week.
Kubheka, who was salso dismissed by the care home, was found guilty of failing to make an assessment of the woman’s injuries before moving her, of not keeping proper records and of failing to call an ambulance after the fall in January 2006.
NMC panel chairman Judy Carr said the South African nurse, who is now living in Croydon, should have acted sooner to care for the pensioner, who was not named in the proceedings, being referred to only as Resident A.
“She was the nurse in charge of the shift and was therefore responsible for her care,” she said. “She plainly was under a duty to call the emergency services and she failed to do so.
“She did not adequately assess whether Resident A had suffered an internal head injury before she was moved from the site of the accident.
“As the last nurse in charge she should’ve carried out regular neurological observations to assess whether she had an internal head injury.
“There is no evidence that she did so.”
Salim Hefejee, for the NMC, added that the conduct “fell below the standard of a nurse.”
“It is very clear that these failures were very basic failures in nursing care,” he said.
“Clearly, there was a duty to protect and support the welfare of those in her care. And there’s a duty to ensure records are adequate.
“We have no evidence to suggest that she understands what she did was wrong and that this won't happen again.”
Deciding to suspend Kubheka, who did not attend the hearing, Ms Carr said her failures had been ‘serious’ but that it would be excessively harsh to ban her from the profession.
“She has not provided us with any information on mitigation, and has not engaged with the process at all,” she added. “But she has had a long career in nursing and this appears to be an isolated incident.”
Spokesman for the care home Jamie Reece said: “A staff member from the home was immediately dismissed and referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
“A safeguarding investigation was carried out at the time of the incident and improvements to the home were made as a result. The health and wellbeing of residents is always our number one priority.”
In March 2009, the care home was cleared of any blame after eight residents died of pneumonia shortly after its heating broke down.
Oxfordshire County Council said there was no direct link between the breakdown and the deaths of the pensioners.
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