A NURSE has been struck off he deliberately inflicted pain on an elderly care home resident by twisting his arm behind his back as he sat naked on a toilet.
David McDade bent the arm of the OAP, who was frail, diabetic and suffered from dementia, at a care home in Glasgow.
And Mr McDade, 58, asked his victim during the incident: “Can you feel the pain?”
A hearing of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) concluded: “Mr McDade’s misconduct was repeated and involved abusive conduct and a deliberate infliction of pain on a vulnerable resident.”
The NMC heard the nurse had previously been sacked from another nursing home following an incident with a patient.
But McDade, from Bonnybridge, near Falkirk, managed to get a new job caring for elderly people at the Whitefield Lodge Care Home in Lennoxtown, Glasgow.
Just a month later, in July 2010, Mr McDade was sacked for the second time after he mistreated the patient sat on a commode in his bedroom.
At an NMC hearing in Edinburgh, a care assistant from Whitefield, Katrina McGhee, told how she and Mr McDade found the patient soaked in urine and started removing his clothes.
She said: “When we took more of his wet clothes off he started to lash out. That’s when David bent down to tell him to calm down and the patient spat in his face. I had never seen him do that before.”
Mr McDade “violently” grabbed the patient’s right arm and bent it behind his back, she said.
She added: “You shouldn’t do that. You don’t bend anyone’s arm up their back especially vulnerable adults, I don’t think it’s right. He looked terrified.”
The patient cried out “my arm, you’re hurting my arm.”
Sacked
Mrs McGhee said: “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I just froze. It’s not something you expect from any one let alone a staff nurse. He said to the patient, “can you feel that pain, are you going to stop now?”
Whitefield manager, Theresa Docherty, told the panel she was aware that Mr McDade had been involved in an incident with another patient at his previous job, but took the decision to hire him anyway.
She said: “I can remember [Mr McDade] bringing in documentation from the police stating that no charges had been upheld.”
Mr McDade had previously been employed as a nurse at Newcarron Court Nursing Centre, Falkirk, but was fired in 2008 after the alleged incident.
The NMC, in its written judgement, said they found “Mr McDade ’s explanations to be inconsistent and undermining of his credibility”.
The panel concluded: “Mr McDade’s actions represented clear departures from the Code and fell seriously short of the standards expected of a registered nurse. Accordingly the panel determined that Mr McDade’s acts amounted to misconduct.
“The panel found that Mr Mc Dade had in the past, and is liable in the future, to act so as to put patients at unwarranted risk of harm.
“It was also not satisfied that Mr McDade was not liable in the future to breach fundamental tenets of the nursing profession. Further, his misconduct has brought the nursing profession into disrepute.”
Mr McDade, who was not present or represented at the hearing, had denied all the charges.
Approached at home, he declined to comment.
