A NURSE is facing allegations that she put a “get well” card in a dying patient’s room.
Lyndsey Anne Dick is also accused of using curling tongs on the hair of the patient at a hospital in Glasgow.
The nurse faces further allegations that she blocked a doorway, stopping medical colleagues reaching the body of a dead patient at Lightburn Hospital in the city’s Carntyne Road.
And Ms Dick is said to have been “staggering” and slurring her words during the same shift.
The nurse, who faces a total of 11 charges of misconduct, is due to appear before the conduct and competence committee of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) next month.
The case follows the revelation that an Aberdeen nurse has been charged with telling a patient’s daughter that he was “looking unwell” when he was dead.
Several of the allegations against Ms Dick relate to a shift at Lightburn Hospital on the evening of November 27 and 28, 2006.
Lightburn is a 120-bed facility which provides rehabilitative care for older patients, including specialist units for stroke and post-trauma patients.
Three of the charges relate to her treatment that night of a female patient, who was either dying or already dead.
Staggering
Ms Dick is alleged to have “put up get well cards in the aforesaid patient’s room whilst she was deceased or dying”.
Another says she “used curling tongs on the hair of a deceased or dying patient”.
She is then alleged to have “blocked the doorway of a deceased patient’s room preventing colleagues from entering”.
Ms Dick is said to have been “staggering about or moving in a jerky manner and were heard to be slurring your words”.
She had reported for work, according to another charge, “when you were not fit to practise as you were fatigued and had experienced a panic attack earlier in the evening”.
The same evening she “left the ward on two separate occasions without explanation and without notifying senior staff”, it is alleged.
And she “spent an unnecessarily long time in the treatment room instead of attending to patients”, according to the NMC.
Earlier that month Ms Dick is said to have been on a night shift in Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow.
She faces four charges relating to her time on ward 12A, the NMC says.
It is claimed she wrongly allowed a patient to discharge themselves from hospital, and failing to inform senior staff a patient had taken ‘irregular discharge.’
She also lied about booking a patient who discharged himself from hospital a taxi, it is claimed.
Another charge says she “allowed a patient to discharge himself without informing his next of kin.”
It emerged today that two nurses who were employed at Beach Court Care Home inAberdeenare also facing charges of improperly handling a patient’s death.
Nurse Faye Wilson is said to have told a patient’s daughter he was ‘not looking very well’ when she knew or believed he was dead.
She is also said to have argued with another nurse at the home, Ma Jenny Quinto, about the patient’s death in front of colleagues and other patients.
Ms Quinto is also facing charges, and the pair will face a competence hearing in January.
