Champion fell runner sacked from hospital for harming frail patients
A MALE nurse regarded as one of the world’s best fell runners has been disciplined for physically hurting and humiliating elderly patients.
Colin Donnelly was sacked from his hospital job and found guilty by the nursing watchdog of six charges.
A hearing of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) banned the former veteran world champion from nursing without supervision for 18 months.
But the 55-year-old Scot, recently described by his bosses at NHS Highland as an ‘ athletic icon’, claimed managers had set out to get him and branded them ‘a coven of witches’.
Mr Donnelly, who had a previously unblemished 20-year nursing career, said he had no intention of ever returning to the profession.
A superstar of the fell running world, he was the youngest man to win the daunting Ben Nevis race in 1979 and became British fell running champion three times in the late 1980s. His Ben Nevis race time has not been beaten for 28 years
The NMC, at a hearing in Edinburgh last week, was told he was going through ‘personal health and work stress’ at the time of the incidents at Belford Hospital, Fort William, Inverness-shire, between January and May last year.
In one incident, he used more force than necessary to move a stroke victim’s arm, causing her to cry out in pain. When the same patient was unable to keep her other arm straight for an IV drip, Mr Donnelly, from Glasgow, said loudly ‘she’s starting to p*** me off ’ within earshot of everyone in the room.
He later held the same patient’s incontinence pad within a foot of her face, and said: ‘Look at this, look how wet you are.’
Another nurse working on the ward described the patient, who had difficulty speaking after a stroke, as looking ‘very embarrassed and hiding into herself’.
On other occasions, Mr Donnelly used a ‘ condemned’ handling technique to move a patient on to a commode, threw a pyjama top to the floor and refused to assist a patient who had fallen, saying ‘he’s not my patient’.
The nurse admitted two of the charges and the others were found proved by the NMC.
He declined to comment after the case, but during a break at the hearing told reporters: ‘They tore me to shreds. It was an awful place and I’ll never go back.
‘This has been such a traumatic experience that I’m never going back to nursing.’
In February, a month after the first misconduct, NHS Highland paid tribute to him on its website saying: ‘NHS Highland can boast an athletic icon of our own in the shape of Colin Donnelly.’
Yesterday the health board apologised ‘to all of the patients and families affected by this case’.
A spokesman added: ‘Patient safety is our utmost priority’ but declined to comment on the website praise of Mr Donnelly.