Disciplinary hearing.

[Esmeralda67]

I have worked in the NHS in different clinical roles for almost 30 years. Had promotions and no issues from clinical or behaviour point of view in that time. Clean record. Last year I made a serious mistake and a patient could hve died as a consequence. I recognised what I had done and accepted an investigation was necessary. However I have been repeatedly told that I now could face a summary dismissal for gross misconduct and I don't know how to go on. I fully accepted my mistake and feel destroyed by the whole process. Not one person in the organisation has offered any support and the stress and anxiety is killing me. I have my hearing soon and I honestly feel suicidal at the prospect. I have lost my career my good name and risk losing my income. I have support from friends but feel so isolated and ashamed.

I really wouldn’t say any exact details of your case on here OP .

You can't just say 'woops!' when you're dealing with peoples' lives.

Was it a medication error. I didnt think OP has told us what happened. With blood transfusions aren't there safety checks in place a bit more sophisticated than just double checking.

I mean this genuinely, but how did you manage to fuck up? Were you distracted, upset, not focused, hungry, over-tired?
Thankfully, the patient survived whatever error it was, so it could be worse.
I think you said you're on leave. You probably need to be.
I have a small amount of sympathy for you, but not much. That said, I hate to hear of anyone's lives being fucked up.

Dear @Esmeralda67

My heart breaks for you.

I was in your position very recently. Mine was a malicious accusation that was eventually deemed unfounded.

I have worked on the front line in nursing for years .

My investigation is now closed, but I feel totally flattened & destroyed by it all.

My rep had so many cases on i only got to speak to him once a month.

I went off long term sick because i was so humiliated at being on restricted duties.

I am due to go back to work in a few weeks ... they wouldnt let me go back to my original job because the team had moved on without me. I had such little support during the whole time i was off sick / throughout investigation.

I had given my heart & soul to my post ( think leadership) and i have had not an ounce of compassion back. Friends dumped me the minute it went to investigation. Iv lost my role, my seniority, my self worth .

It is not something i will get over.

I am looking for jobs outside of the NHS , outside of nursing and will leave as soon as i can.

All my values of compassion ( i was known as Mother Earth at work ) have been totallykicked and trampled on.

Think about what your core values are , are they being reciprocated at work? In the way you live your life are you able to live in accordance with your values?

If not , then make some changes- because what leads us to happiness is being able to live in accordance with our values.

This is why i am leaving the NHS , because it has reduced me to a shadow and i need to find me again.

You are not on your own @Esmeralda67 . Do not punish your any longer. It is time for you to have some kindness for yourself.

Oksana - would you want the OP to be administering your meds?

What do meds have to do with anything? I think you're getting mixed up with another poster.

It's obviously difficult to make a judgement without specifics (and the OP definitely shouldn't share them on here), but from what the OP has said, I can't see any reason to think that they wouldn't be competent to administer meds to me or a member of my family. They are experienced, have recognised their mistake and have obviously learned from it. I would far, far rather be treated by someone who recognises that they make mistakes than someone who doesn't. HCP who think they don't make mistakes are dangerous.

Everything needs to be double checked because of the risk of human error.

Everything? Do you really think so?!

I think Sunlov thinks that my case was due to administration of blood products as I mentioned them as an example of how practise has changed over time with research into what errors have been caused by.
FWIW, as I mentioned in my initial post, it was a bug which caused my patient harm. And I made no error.
In the case where I made an error, no, it wasn’t blood. It was a medication error. And I have given thousands of medications with no errors over several years.

It doesn't matter if you've administered 1 million drugs. What matters is that you fucked up.

@Sunlov

This is the Employment Issues board, just to remind you.

We don't tolerate AIBU style communications on here thanks. We provide information and advice pertaining to employment law. We also provide support to people going through employment challenges.

We don't find fault or turn things into a vendetta, so please bear that in mind

If you have employment law advice, you're of course welcome to stay. If you can't find it in yourself to work to these principles, you're in the wrong place.

Patients’ lives are at risk every day in the NHS due to understaffing or poor staffing and dangerous systems
This is the sad reality and it is acknowledge by the government although solutions are of course short to come forward because there are no miracle solutions, so yes, accidents increase and its a very sad acknowledgement of the nhs.

However, I don't think it means that all mistakes should be seen as just that, consequences of pressures. There is a lot of resources and systems put in place to minimise these (those managers who are considered useless and waste of money by many) and mistakes do need to be investigated and if considered preventable, it is only fair to consider whether that person is fit to practice. That's why the investigation takes so long.

Personally, I think the process is right. What isn't is how low paid nurses are considering the risks they are facing in their career and the potential outcome of an error forctheir career but sanity too. However horrendous OP's situation is, I can't only imagine it would be much worse all around if the patient had died, knowing that it was as a result of an easily preventable error.

Sunlov in the nicest possible way, you're not contributing anything helpful to this thread, you're repeatedly telling a very vulnerable and already remorseful person that they 'fucked up', and several people have tried to convey to you tactfully that it's time for you to piss off now. Maybe go and find a thread where you can be useful or constructive? Especially since you're starting to repeat yourself here, and are therefore being both unpleasant AND boring.

Esmerelda have pm'd you

@Sunlov you are an absolute cow. Devoid of compassion and empathy.
We all make mistakes that's life. Just stop making the OP feel worse that she already does.
She already feels suicidal at time do you want to push her over the edge?
Would that be enough punishment? God help us with and save us from people like you.

It’s clear sunluv isn’t within the nhs, it’s a good job otherwise instead of a 70,000 shortfall of nurses in 2020, there would be thousands more.
That of course sunluv, would make the nhs even safer wouldn’t it,

We are broken as an organisation, not at breaking point.. broken.
1 nurse to 32 patients, waiting for over 2 hours to give a double checked drug because the nurse has only the duty matron or the nurse in the ward next door to check the drugs.. that is a drug error, that has to be documented in the patients notes as a delay.
Sunluv, this could potentially contribute to a patients death and is a “fuck up” as you say. Should that nurse be gone? That nurse is one of thousands every day put in that position.
You have absolutely no idea, no idea.

I've NCed for this thread. As a patient I was involved in a (I don't know the terminology sorry) incident which was referred to as Incident causing patient harm, I think it was a grade or level 3?

I obviously had to be told about it at the time. I was also sent a letter detailing the investigation and outcome and invited to a meeting afterwards to discuss it.

My sympathies were entirely reserved for the staff involved. It was the worst ward and hospital I had ever been in (an acute ward). The staff were so understaffed and stressed, I regularly saw nurses crying. The doctors involved in mine had been on shift for 14 hours - they were exhausted. I really really felt for them and sincerely hope it didn't damage their careers, and I said so at all stages.

I have lots and lots sympathy for the staff but none for this government (and previous) who have woefully underfunded the NHS, and don't experience the consequences with their private health care Any blame for my incident I attribute to this as a cause and I know the staff were doing their best. With hindsight they should have left at the ends of their shifts but there was no one else there to take their places and patients requiring urgent care.

We are human, not robots - and I would rather be cared for by humans and realise they are not infallible and accept the risks. Just wanted to post from a patient's viewpoint.

Thanks for posting ChangedNC. That is a really insightful and understanding attitude . Some patients can be amazingly supportive.

Similarly to ChangedNC I have been involved in a case where an error has been made as a patient (I am also a former nurse with 16 years' experience), although not in the UK. In my case an operation didn't go as planned due to human error and required revision about 6 months after it was originally performed. I certainly wasn't angry, I understood that mistakes happen, the clinicians were honest with me when it became apparent that things weren't as they should be and it was put right. We cannot expect perfection from human beings.

I also had a human error case, I had a midwife the next day sitting on the end of my bed in tears apologizing. Senior management we saw in contrast seemed more concerned about minimizing so they wouldn't be sued.
I was much crosser with the management bods, both the midwife and the obstetrician were open about the mistakes and the impact of them.
I could see the staffing pressures and impact of them. No one had set out to nearly kill my dc.
I was more interested in making sure there was a review to make sure it didn't happen again.

Really kind of both of you to give your experiences too and for being so understanding of how errors happen (that sounds really patronising and I don’t mean it to sound that way at all).

OP don't let your career be defined by a mistake. To improve safety we need people to be open and honest and not supporting people who have been open will make things worse for everyone. I have worked in health and social care for years including as a regulator: lots of things contribute to errors, not just humans. Hang in there and I hope you get shown some compassion.

Yes, I felt that the fact they were so honest about what happened, really helped. The error couldn't be "hidden" but the fact they told me ASAP and were so open made me feel better. If it had been attempted to minimise or "cover up" it would have been awful. Ironically I always used to say to staff (different sector) it's not necessarily the mistakes you make, it's also the way you deal with them which influences the outcome.

Having said that, I can understand the anger of some posters here. If it had been an error resulting in fatality I imagine my DH and DC would not be so accepting and it would be an understandable reaction to "bay for blood" for want of a better expression.

I wouldn't call it baying for blood, if myself or my family suffered or god forbid died due to a serious medical/nursing error I would want to see more than just an investigation or to be told that lessons will be learnt. I've seen it from both sides and maybe sometimes it is a catalogue of events that lead to a mistake, sometimes its incompetence or lack of knowledge. Of course it's unfair the way some staff are treated when they make a genuine mistake and malicious accusations, scapegoating happen pretty frequently but some errors are preventable and shouldn't someone take responsibility.

We also talked about what our reaction would have been if our dd had died, it was very close. We agreed that we might well have been so angry that we would have wanted to sue the hospital. We still thought that overall systemic failures were more at fault than individual ones but we would have had a lot of anger to direct somewhere.

Good luck OP, stay strong, you are bigger than this!

from a fellow NHS worker who lives and practices in fear xx

I was a nurse and I had one disciplinary for a non-dangerous drug error which highlighted a procedural failing. The trust felt that they had to take me through the process as a test case before the checking procedure changed. It was enormously stressful for several months and, despite just getting a written warning, I felt the relationship between myself and the hospital management was very damaged and moved to another job very soon after.

I don't nurse now and instead I work in schools. I respect the role of the teachers, but it's certainly true that a rotten teacher can go on for years doing a poor job, while an excellent nurse can lose their job in a flash.