An overworked nurse who claimed she made a string of errors while ‘stressed beyond endurance’ has been struck off.
Jolanta Nowak, 54, boycotted the misconduct hearing in London after calling the investigation a ‘show trial of which Stalin would have been impressed’.
Nowak admitted to a series of blunders at the Cheltenham General Hospital between March 2003 and February 2005 including failing to give patients their drugs and not filling out charts.
On one occasion she gave a male patient a double dose of a naso- gastric feed after forgetting she had already given him one.
The man struggled for air on the feed after the incident on February 9, 2005.
Husband Chris Nowak, 54, read out a statement to the Nursing and Midwifery Council prepared by his wife, claiming she was in a ‘no- win situation’.
She said: ‘On many occasions I noticed that I, as an ordinary Grade D, was scheduled to work as the sole qualified nurse on this supremely busy ward for several shifts in succession, something my colleagues were not asked to do.
‘At such times I remember being stressed beyond endurance.
‘I put this scapegoating down to the fact that I have a tendency to speak my mind.
‘ I believe I was being placed deliberately under yet further stress in order to generate so-called ‘errors’ on my part.
The first of the mistakes happened on March 15 and 16, 2003, when Nowak failed to fill in a patient’s care chart.
Two days later, on March 17, Nowak failed to give a cardiac patient his medication to treat heart failure, and another nurse had to give the drug more than four hours late.
On July 28, Nowak again failed to give two drugs to a patient, one a beta-blocker and one a mineral supplement – again it was given late by another nurse.
Nowak claims the proceedings have been biased against her and urged fellow nurses to boycott their NMC hearings.
She said: ‘I have lived under communism and I recognised a show trial when I see it. Stalin would have been impressed.
‘The hearing and all its precursor processes are intentionally skewed against me.
Nowak resigned from Cheltenham General Hospital in March 2005 and was told on April 15 she had been referred to the NMC for misconduct.
But after a gap of up to two months at the end of June, her husband believed there was no chance of the NMC continuing the case.
To cheer his wife up and put the whole thing behind them, Mr Nowak decided they should burn all the documents in the back garden.
Mr Nowak left the hearing before he heard panel chair Linda Read rule that his wife’s fitness to practice was impaired as a result of her misconduct.
Ms Read said the panel ‘frankly do not accept’ the registrant’s claims that she was bullied into her mistakes.
She said: “In the basic areas of her practice, the registrant fell far below the standard expected of a registered nurse.
“We are concerned the registrant has admitted the facts in a qualified way.
“It is clear from her written statement that she is still not prepared to take responsibility for her actions.”
(c) 2008 Gloucestershire Echo, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
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