A CARE worker wept as she told a disciplinary hearing how a nurse ignored pleas to call an ambulance for a heavily bleeding elderly patient.
Alison Cochrane appeared before the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in Edinburgh to face charges relating to her time as a care home nurse between 2009 and 2013.
The charges include a claim that she âfailed to call an ambulance promptlyâ for an elderly patient in November 2013.
Mrs Cochrane is said to have described the womanâs condition as  âthe worst she had ever seenâ but she called NHS 24 rather than 999.
A witness claimed this delayed the ambulance by 35 minutes.
The charges relate to Mrs Cochrane’s time working as a staff nurse at two South Ayrshire care homes – Fairknowe House in Maybole and Queen’s Care Nursing Home in Prestwick.
The hearing took evidence from Margaret Kirk, a team leader at Queenâs Care.
She described how – during a night shift in November 2013 – a resident at the care home had âtaken not wellâ at around 6am.
She said that she was called down from her floor to assist, but found that Mrs Cochrane was in the duty room, âon hold to NHS Directâ instead of assisting the patient and calling an ambulance.
Ms Kirk said Mrs Cochrane told her that the elderly patientâs condition was âthe worst she had ever seenâ.
She recalled how Mrs Cochrane âsaid that she was vomiting what looked like black stuff”.
She said Cochrane admitted she “was worried” because, “in her words, she was coughing up blood – it was coming from all ends.”
But according to the witness Mrs Cochrane did not call an ambulance despite being told to twice by Ms Kirk – even after she had raised her voice in distress.
According to the witness, this resulted in the emergency services eventually arriving some 35 minutes later than they should have.
Ms Kirk, her eyes filling with tears, said: “I don’t think that was appropriate”.
âAlison should have taken my advice, I know the residents.â
The witness also related how another colleague told her that Mrs Cochrane had refused to enter the room with the patient, saying âI donât do sickâ.
Mrs Cochrane also faces a charge that she left medication  for patients to self-administer at Fairknowe House.
Rosemary Coupland, manager at a care home owned by the same company, said she investigated the matter in 2013.
She said: â[She would] dispense medication, trust this person had taken the medication, go back and check they had taken it and check the medicine pot was empty.â
She said this was ânot acceptableâ, adding: âYouâve got a responsibility to make sure that these practices are done correctly â youâre in charge of people’s  lives.â
Mrs Cochrane denies all the charges and her lawyer, Scott Flannigan, put it to Ms Kirk that much of her evidence depended on âhearsayâ. She replied: âYes.â
Mr Flannigan also questioned Ms Kirk about her claim that the ambulance took 40 minutes to arrive compared with the normal five. He suggested it could have arrived in as little as 10 minutes. Ms Kirk denied this.
The hearing continues.
