A nurse failed to recognise the signs of a cardiac arrest in a patient she was caring for at a Glasgow hospital, a report has found. Julie Ann Walker has been stationed by watchdogs after a series of mistakes at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
The report released last week by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) found the medic walked away from a patient despite him taking him seriously unwell. Statements from colleagues show that Walker "showed no urgency" as the mans condition worsened.
Eyewitnesses say the medic failed to pull the emergency buzzer. Instead slowly walking over to colleagues to have them come look at the patient.
Nurse 3 told investigators: "She came over to us and said something like ‘can you come and see this man, he doesn’t look very well'. The patient’s wife was in-between the patient and the emergency buzzer, I moved past her urgently, shouted, and pulled the buzzer", Glasgow Live reports.
And nurse 4 pointed out: "Julie came over to us and asked for us to come and look at a patient who was unwell. Julie said something along the lines of ‘the patient was a funny colour’. She was calm and did not give the impression that this was an emergency.’"
The NMC rejected Walker's claims that she was aware the patient was "grey and unresponsive" and that she "shouted for help" from two nurses standing 10 to 15 feet away during the incident in September 2017.
They also did not believe her claim that she could not access the emergency buzzer because chairs and other equipment were in the way.
The report explained: "The panel rejected your account that you recognised the symptoms of a cardiac arrest and that you remained in the room and shouted for help. In the panel’s view, your account of these events was not credible.
"The panel accepted the evidence of Ms 4 and Ms 3 that you did not shout for help. It also found that, had you shouted for help, given the proximity of the nurses’ station room to Patient A, Ms 4 and Ms 3 would have heard you. Further, given the lack of urgency with which you approached Ms 4 and Ms 3, the panel was satisfied that you did not recognise the symptoms of a cardiac arrest in this patient when you entered the room."
Walker was also found to have failed to carry out adequate post-operative observations on another patient, then lied about not having received a handover from a colleague in October 2017.
On another occasion, she was found to have given a seriously ill patient the wrong medication and then failed to record it and to have been unable to carry out correctly medical procedures expected of her without help, including removing wound clips.
And while working as a nurse at Craig-en-Goyne Care Home in 2019 Walker admits she did not consult a patient's notes before attempting and failing to catheterise her, then didn't bother to mention it in her notes.
The panel imposed conditions of practice order for a period of 18 months on Walker's record, meaning that anyone who enquires about her registration will be informed.
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