They go
and prove me wrong.
I was
disgusted at the NMC’s treatment of Pauline Cafferkey, and expressed it in this
blog. She was the nurse who contracted Ebola, while volunteering to look after
Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, but her symptoms didn’t appear until she was on
her way home. The NMC (Nursing and Midwifery Council) charged her with
misconduct for having a temperature and for someone else recording it wrong. She
wasn’t on duty, she didn’t take her own temperature and no one caught Ebola
from her. She was cleared of all charges when the NMC tribunal collapsed and
very quickly (1).
With the
tribunal collapsing so fast I thought that it was the end of it all, but no. Not
being able to prosecute Pauline Cafferkey, they have turned their attention to
the woman who wrote down Pauline Cafferkey’s temperature.
Donna
Wood is now facing charges of misconduct, bought against her by the NMC, the
regulator of her own profession (2). She was one of the first British nurses to
volunteer to look after Ebola patients in West Africa. She was on the same
flight back to the UK as Pauline Cafferkey and she walked into the same chaos at
Heathrow Airport as Pauline Cafferkey.
Public
Health England (3) organised the screening of passengers at risk of being
infected with Ebola at Heathrow Airport. But of this screening process was
shown to be chaotic and extremely poorly organised (4). Half of the people
screening passengers were administration workers from the Cabinet Office, with
no clinician experience. The manager of the screening centre was a former
Metropolitan police officer, not a doctor or a nurse, he didn’t have the
clinical experience to run a screening centre and he didn’t even have the
correct telephone number for the infectious diseases consultant at Northwick
Park hospital, the north-west London hospital were any suspected Ebola patients
were to be taken. Pauline Cafferkey were classified as category 2, which
related to journalists and others who only visited Ebola treatment centres, and
not category 3, which was for healthcare workers who had been looking after
Ebola patients.
Donna
Wood walked into all this chaos. She was tired after nursing Ebola patients for
several months, wearing full protective clothing in a hot climate, she was
tired from a long flight home, she was in a noisy and chaotic environment, is
it any wonder she made a mistake writing down a colleague’s temperature. But she
should never have been put into this position, she should never have been asked
to check a colleague’s temperature. There should have been enough experienced
healthcare professionals to screen passengers, healthcare professionals who
knew what to do with a person who had a temperature.
Donna Wood
wasn’t on duty when this occurred, she wasn’t caring for patients, she was
passenger flying into Heathrow Airport. She was tired and in chaotic and unbelievably
poorly managed environment. She made a momentary mistake, she misheard what
another person said (She was not the person who actually took Pauline Cafferkey’s
temperature) in a noisy environment. No one caught Ebola from Pauline
Cafferkey, there was no cross infection, so why is Donna Wood being persecuted?
The NMC
has a screening process where they check the validity of all complaints (5),
they say they weed out complaints were there is no case to answer. Why weren’t
Pauline Cafferkey’s and Donna Wood’s cases weeded out at this point? Both these
complaints were made by Public Health England, in a blatant case of passing the
blame and drawing attention away from them, yet the NMC seems to have just
rolled over and done what Public Health England wanted.
Donna
Wood’s tribunal has already begun (2), but I really hope it collapses the way
Pauline Cafferkey’s did (1). Donna Wood does not deserve this treatment, even
if she did write down the wrong temperature it was during an extremely chaotic
situation. Would someone who had witnessed the horrors of Ebola first hand deliberately
have covered up a potential case of it?
Public
Health England has not been held responsible for the shambolic way they
conducted the Ebola screening at Heathrow. They are the ones responsible for
this mess and yet they are the ones still trying to pass the blame onto other
people.
Public
Health England and the NMC are both ultimately responsible to Jeremy Hunt, as
Health Minister, and what has he said about this mess and passing of the blame?
Nothing. I cannot find any statements of his about all of this, but then I am
not surprised. He hasn’t proved himself a competent Minister of Health so far.
Pauline
Cafferkey’s tribunal fell apart and hopefully Donna Wood’s will too. This has
been a complete waste of time and money, none of this has been in the public
interest and it borders on a witch hunt. Again the NMC has shown themselves as
less than competent at regulating the nursing profession. How can I trust them
to treat me with any fairness and honesty now?
Drew Payne
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