Hospitals trust director steps down over his ‘dishonest’ actions
SUSPENSION FROM NURSING AFTER HE FAST-TRACKED A COLLEAGUE AND FAILED TO REFER A CHILD WHO HAD SEPSIS
A DIRECTOR at a Nottinghamshire hospitals trust has resigned after being found to have acted “dishonestly” by a regulator.
David Ainsworth stepped down from his position as director of strategy and partnerships at Sherwood Forest Hospitals (SFH) on Thursday, after being given a year-long nursing suspension.
A fitness to practise misconduct hearing found Mr Ainsworth fasttracked a colleague and failed to refer a child with life-threatening sepsis between 2018 and 2020, before trying to cover them up. SFH said it was aware of the ongoing investigation when appointing him as a director in September 2022, but said he met the fit and proper persons test.
“David leaves with our best wishes and we thank him for all that he achieved during his time with the trust,” the trust, which operates King’s Mill, Newark and Mansfield community hospitals, said in a statement. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) misconduct hearing, held between February 21 and 23, was told Mr Ainsworth “fast-tracked” a colleague for a hospital appointment while holding two positions within the local NHS.
He later provided conflicting information over the phone to hospital staff and “misled them about [his] position and the referral”.
Mr Ainsworth, who was working for National Events Management Service (NEMS) as a registered nurse and held a role at the local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), wrongly told a colleague that the referral had come via his position in NEMS.
In January 2019, he missed red flags of sepsis for a child and gave wrong information to her mother during a phone call, before sending them to a pharmacy instead of asking them to come in for a full review.
He documented that the mother said her daughter’s rash “did fade”, but she had in fact said the opposite.
Mr Ainsworth also incorrectly said the girl’s mother declined to come in for a review.
Later that year, he failed to interpret the blood results which showed a patient, referred to as Patient B, was “critically unwell”, advising them to attend for a repeated blood test when they should have been asked to go to A&E immediately.
“When Patient B attended for a further blood test, a colleague identified that this was a life-threatening condition and called for an ambulance,” the panel said. During the local investigation, Mr Ainsworth said he could not see all the results for Patient B, but this was disputed by a colleague who said he would have full access.
An audit found he “failed to keep adequate records”. Mr Ainsworth, who was first referred to the NMC in January 2020, told the panel he regretted his actions. He subsequently resigned from both his NEMS and CCG role.
“You told the panel that you know you have done wrong and that you are sorry to your patients and that this affected the reputation of nurses,” the panel said. “You said that you are a normal person who tried to do a normal job and make a difference to people’s lives.”
The NMC panel determined his actions were “deplorable, falling far below the standard expected of a registered nurse”. Deciding to suspend him for 12 months, it said: “You circumvented proper process in order to fasttrack a colleague through the emergency care system and, even if done for altruistic motives, this was still an abuse of your position.
“You failed to make appropriate referrals in the case of a child who could have had sepsis, a life-threatening condition, and an adult with raised potassium levels, who could have gone into cardiac arrest, again a life threatening condition.
“These were very serious failures that were then significantly compounded by your dishonest actions in attempting to cover up your behaviour.”