Nurse is struck off over shameful care of dying
A NURSE has been struck off after roughly handling and showing a lack of respect for dying patients.
Nancy Smith grabbed the legs of a dying elderly man and insisted on wearing a paper towel on her face instead of a proper mask while treating a terminally-ill woman.
Her conduct resulted in her transfer to a separate hospital ward for elderly patients.
But while there she told a blind woman: ‘It’s big lumps like you that give us a sore back.’
The revelations are in a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) report after a hearing in Edinburgh last month. Mrs Smith faced 18 charges, 13 of which were found proved.
While caring for terminally ill patients at a hospice attached to Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline, in 2014 she was found to have roughly handled a patient who was in the last stages of his life.
The hearing heard she pulled his legs in a ‘rough manner’ and a nurse told the hearing the patient ‘was distressed’.
Mrs Smith also placed a ‘paper towel’ over her face while tending to a dying cancer patient and refused to remove it despite being asked to by a colleague.
Following the incidents, Mrs Smith was transferred to Glenrothes Hospital in July 2015.
But in February last year, she mistreated the 98-year-old blind woman. A witness claimed the woman told her she was sore and, referring to Mrs Smith, said: ‘She’s trying to kill me.’
The NMC removed Mrs Smith from its register, stating: ‘Your failings represent a serious departure from the standards expected of a registered nurse and you have not satisfied the panel that such failings would not be repeated.’