‘BULLIED FOR SAVING A LIFE’
In the back of a speeding ambulance heroic nurse gave vital blood transfusion to a critically ill woman. Her reward? Risible charges from her box-ticking bosses for not following protocol . . . then being hounded out of the job she loves
IT WAS a journey from hell. Inside an ambulance in the middle of a storm-lashed night, acute care nursing sister Leona Harris fought to save the life of a woman who had suffered a miscarriage, followed by a massive haemorrhage from her womb.
The plastic blood- transfusion bag connected via a cannula to a vein in the patient’s arm was about to run out. Blue lights on, the ambulance was racing as fast as its driver dared, all the while being jolted by 60mph gusts from Storm Doris.
The buffeting of the vehicle made replacing the almost-empty blood unit particularly perilous. But Leona knew that if she did not do it, the patient – her white pallor betraying how much blood she had lost – might go into shock and suffer a cardiac arrest.
The nurse decided to act. Before the ambulance left the M65 for the roundabouts, twists and turns that lie between the motorway and Burnley General Hospital, she asked one of the paramedics to hold her steady while she performed the delicate manoeuvre. ‘I couldn’t stand up, we were going so fast,’ she told this newspaper.
She managed the task with aplomb. The patient reached hospital safely and was
‘The priority that night was to save this patient’s life’
rushed into theatre, where surgeons operated immediately. She was able to go home the next day. For Leona, however, the consequences were devastating.
Astonishingly, her decision to change the blood bag in the small hours of February 23 last year triggered months of investigations and disciplinary hearings.
Nobody was suggesting that giving the patient the blood she had needed was wrong. Indeed, the only reason Leona had been asked to travel in the ambulance was that she, unlike the paramedics, had the experience and qualifications required to give transfusions. But her employers decided to discipline her because of a missing piece of paper.
Through no fault of her own, the purple form that should have been filled in before Leona gave the new blood had been accidentally left behind when one of the paramedics collected the patient’s notes.
Technically, this meant that by giving the blood without the form being on board the ambulance, Leona had broken the rules – as she admitted from the outset. But as she pointed out, this case was an emergency, triggering the ‘major haemorrhage protocol’ governing patients who might bleed to death. The woman had already had at least two haemorrhages.
Leona says: ‘My skills and experience as a nurse told me that even without the paperwork, the priority was to save this woman’s life.’
But Leona says her employer, East Lancashire NHS Hospitals Trust, rejected her explanation and responded to the unintentional bureaucratic glitch by treating her as a troublemaker and then, when she refused to back down, subjecting her to an inexplicable campaign of ‘bullying and intimidation’.
Eventually, on January 1, Leona felt she had no choice but to resign from the job she adored – after 15 years of exemplary and unblemished service.
‘I wanted to be a nurse from the age of four,’ she says. ‘I’ve worked so hard: going back to school to get my A-levels, giving up Christmases with my kids. And they treat me like this. It’s just so wrong.’
Her story is far from isolated. The Mail on Sunday interviewed Leona together with her former boss, matron Blanche Henry – who also claims she was bullied into resigning last year after more than 30 years’ service. Both women say other members of their team quit for similar reasons.
On New Year’s Day, Leona, 45, only an occasional Facebook user, put up a post explaining why she was l eaving. ‘ Today with great sadness, I have resigned,’ the message said. ‘My aim now is to expose t he horrible,
bullying culture that has ruined so many good nursing professionals’ lives, including my own.
‘I will not let the bullies win and will do everything I can from now on to make sure this stops so people can go to work feeling respected and without fear.’
The response – not just from the Royal Blackburn Hospital where Leona worked, but from across the country – has been overwhelming. It includes hundreds of supportive comments from patients and NHS staff, who paid tribute to her skills; hundreds of ‘Shares’, mostly from strangers; and hundreds more private messages from every kind of health professional, saying they too had been bullied.
It has stiffened her resolve. ‘I will do whatever it takes to make the trust apologise and restore my unblemished record ,’ Leona says, adding that it must also demonstrate that the hospital’s stated policies against bullying – which look impressive on paper – will be enforced. Leona and Blanche say that even before the transfusion incident, the atmosphere in the Blackburn acute nursing unit was tense. Both women claim one manager used to leave critical notes about staff on a desk for their subjects and others to read. Another sent Leona a text saying that while she was a ‘bloody good worker’, she needed a ‘mouth filter’. ‘She didn’t seem to like the fact that I’d chat to patients to put them at ease.’ When the blood-paperwork error came to light, Leona freely admitted it, and was told she would simply be given a day’s training so that the mistake would not be repeated. Leona accepted this, but continued to make the case that she had responded to an emergency and had saved a patient’s life. Then matters escalated. First, she was told not to turn up for her next three night shifts. When she returned for a day shift, she says a manager insisted she had to write a ‘reflection’ – a short account of the incident. When she did so, Leona says, the manager told her it did not reflect the ‘enormity’ of the situation. She was invited to submit a new version admitting the patient had been ‘unsafe’, and that a doctor should have been in the ambulance. She did not believe either claim was true – but, fighting back tears of indignation, she complied.
The consequence was a full-blown investigation. Under trust rules, this procedure should have taken no more than 20 days, but it lasted six months. Leona languished at home, signed off by a doctor on grounds of stress.
The MoS has seen documents raising serious questions about this inquiry, including complaints from witnesses saying they were being quoted inaccurately in ‘informal’ statements taken by managers that were never signed. Meanwhile,
‘My aim is to expose the horrible, bullying culture’
Leona submitted a complaint claiming she was being bullied. ‘That made me a marked woman,’ she says. ‘ From then on, they were determined to force me out.’
She faced a disciplinary hearing in August. It ruled she should be given a written warning, and transferred to Burnley – serious blemishes on her record. Leona appealed, and was able to make an audio recording of a second hearing in October.
Heard by the MoS, it includes a section where a manager appears to shout her down, asking her to admit she had been placed on ‘restrictive duties’ because of her s upposed i ncompetence. The appeal was rejected.
Finally, on December 20, the trust wrote to Leona saying there was ‘no evidence to support this allegation’ of bullying. It had, it said, conducted an inquiry and had produced a report. But she was not entitled to see it because this would be against trust policy.
Leona said none of the key witnesses who would have supported her claims had been interviewed.
She was told she was welcome to return to work, but if she wished to remain a sister, she would have to do a desk job. The only way she could continue to fulfil her childhood vocation, nursing the seriously ill, was to accept a humiliating demotion and work as a ‘band 5’ staff nurse. Leona says: ‘I had no choice except to resign.’
In a letter to the trust, she added: ‘My single aim is to return to the job I love with my employment record restored. I want the trust to recognise bullying is a serious problem that destroys people’s lives… ever since I mentioned the word bullying I have been victimised.’ And then came her post on Facebook. Almost immediately, the responses and ‘Shares’ flooded in. Dozens came from Blackburn colleagues, all lamenting the loss of a ‘brilliant’ and ‘terrific’ nurse who would be ‘sorely missed’.
One doctor commented: ‘You are well and truly amazing at your job. It was always a pleasure to have worked alongside you, and you provided a lot of staff members with confidence.’ Another added: ‘You are the best nurse I have worked with… but the cause you are fighting for is worth it and I am sure you will win.’ As the post went viral, other NHS staff, first from Blackburn and then from all over England, sent public and private messages, many relating their own experiences of bullying.
In one of many such messages, a bullying victim from Kent told of her experience and urged Leona to get in touch so ‘maybe together we can really get this issue that is within all trusts out in the open and dealt with’.
Leona says: ‘I never intended to start a campaign, but that is what is emerging. People who work in the NHS should want to go to work every day instead of dreading it – not just nurses but doctors, cleaners, everyone. The NHS is in crisis – but this will have a huge impact on patient care.’
In 2016, an NHS survey of thousands of hospital staff found one in four had been bullied in the previous 12 months, but only 44 per cent of victims had made complaints. The figures for East Lancashire were slightly better than the national average.
Meanwhile, it is clear that East Lancashire can ill afford to lose experienced nurses. A trust spokesman admitted that Blackburn hospital was ‘about 200’ nurses short of its necessary complement, forcing it to fill gaps by using expensive agency nurses. Yesterday the trust declined to answer questions about the treatment of Leona and Blanche, saying it had to ‘protect its legal position and that of its employees’. It added that the bullying claims were ‘completely unfounded’.
Executive director of nursing Christine Pearson said she was ‘ surprised and disappointed at Mrs Harris’s behaviour in response to a fair and exhaustive process carried out by the trust following an issue which arose last year’.
She added: ‘Throughout all of this, patient safety has been our priority. We stand by our actions.’
‘You are the best nurse I have worked with’