Nurse touched colleague’s bottom and asked for dirty pics

AN A&E nurse who touched a colleague’s bottom and attempted to straddle her has been struck off.

Simon Carl Bates had also asked for “dirty pics” of another colleague and told another “I should have bent you over the bin trolley”, and was ruled to have committed serious sexual misconduct.

Some of Mr Bates’ actions had taken place while working for University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHWC) NHS Trust.

Mr Bates did not attend the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) fitness to practise committee hearing earlier this month when he was removed from the nursing register.

While working for the UHCW Trust as a staff nurse in A&E, Mr Bates sent an inappropriate message to another colleague on Facebook.

“You got any dirty pics of anyone at work like (unnamed colleague),” he asked.

The following month, he told a colleague in a cleaning cupboard: “I should have bent you over the bin trolley.”

Mr Bates said in a written statement that the Facebook message was a “private piece of locker room banter” and the push was a “joke only”.

Previously to his misconduct while working at UHCW Trust, Mr Bates had worked as a senior A&E nurse for Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust.

While there he touched a female colleague’s bottom and placed, or attempted to place, his hand inside her skirt.

Another time, he attempted to straddle her while she was lying down on a sofa during a night-shift break.

And, on another occasion, he said to her “you look like a lesbian” and “it’s a shame you’ve lost weight because your tits don’t look big anymore”.

Mr Bates had told an investigatory meeting in 2014 that he “might have pinched her bottom at some point but in a silly way, not sexually. I just try to be funny”.

In relation to straddling her, he said that he “went to make her jump while she was asleep”.

The NMC panel ruled that his “misconduct was of a repeated, sexual and inappropriate nature which would be seen as deplorable by fellow practitioners and members of the public alike”.

Bates sought to “minimise the impact of his actions and to pass them off as light-hearted banter, despite his actions involving serious sexual misconduct”.

The panel said his behaviour took place over an “extended period of time across two different hospitals” and he “abused his position” and there were “multiple victims”.

Despite a disciplinary procedure being initiated after the Northampton incidents, “he went on to another employer and engaged in conduct of a similar nature”, it was stated.

It was necessary to strike his name off the nursing register to provide a “clear message” about the standard of behaviour required in the profession and to “protect potential colleagues of Mr Bates”, the panel ruled.