An experienced Mid Wales nurse could be struck off after failing to correctly deal with an emergency involving a young child with a head injury taken into Builth Wells Hospital.
Doreen Roberts, of Builth Wells, a nurse for more than 30 years, was found guilty of professional misconduct by a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel in Cardiff yesterday, following an incident at the cottage hospital on June 19, 2006.
The panel heard the two-year-old girl was taken into hospital after being hit on the head by a vacuum cleaner which pinned her against a door.
The girl’s mother said her daughter pulled the flex of the cleaner from the bottom of the stairs at their home, causing the main unit to tumble from the top and hit her.
She drove her to the hospital in Builth Wells where Mrs Roberts was working.The panel heard that after being seen briefly by Mrs Roberts, the child was taken to the cottage hospital in Llandrindod Wells by her worried mother.
There the child was examined and an ambulance called immediately to take her to Hereford Hospital.
Mrs Roberts had denied three allegations of failing to take details of the child’s accident, neglecting to take the child into the hospital’s minor injury unit for examination and allowing her to be driven to hospital in Llandrindod Wells by car.
But she admitted two charges of failing to complete documentation recording the child’s visit to hospital and not calling for an ambulance.
The panel found the three contested allegations proved and said Mrs Roberts’s actions amounted to professional misconduct. It will reconvene later to decide what sanctions, if any, they will take against Mrs Roberts.
Mrs Roberts told the panel: “I did ask the mother to go through to the minor injuries unit, but she just said ‘I want to see a doctor’.
“At the time I did a visual assessment and in my opinion the child was not unconscious.”
Under cross-examination by Joanna Dirmikis, for the NMC, Mrs Roberts was asked about the extent of her assessment in the five minutes she saw the child.
Miss Dirmikis also asked the nurse how she was able to say the child was not limp without holding her.
The barrister said: “A visual assessment is not good enough is it?”
Mrs Roberts replied: “It doesn’t look like it.”
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