A midwife made a distressing joke about ‘pulling flowers’ out of a new mum who suffered traumatic birth complications ‘like in Benidorm’s Sticky Vicky show’, a misconduct panel heard.
Paul Johnson faces 29 allegations of misconduct whilst working as a senior midwife in a women and children's hospital.
Some of the allegations include that he bullied and undermined staff and took two pictures of women having c-sections against their will, which he showed to someone he was having a relationship with.
It’s also alleged Mr Johnson filmed himself performing a sex act in hospital toilets.
Mr Johnson was an employee at the hospital since 2002 and was responsible for managing and coordinating the labour ward before his 18 month suspension.
Before that, Mr Johnson was a well-known and respected midwife who had delivered hundreds of babies, according to Hull Daily Mail.
But the second day of a four-day Nursing and Midwifery Council’s misconduct hearing today (Tuesday) heard further evidence from witnesses over allegations of a “toxic feel” on the labour ward in which some staff felt intimidated or undermined.
One female staff member at the Hull Women & Children's Hospital, told the panel she had felt “disgusted” and “distressed” after Mr Johnson allegedly made a joke about a first-time mum who had “lost a large volume of blood” after haemorrhaging while giving birth.
The colleague told the panel she was told to remove a wound pack - a pack placed inside the private area to stem bleeding - from the lady and asked Mr Johnson for guidance on how to do so safely.
“I imagined it wasn’t any more difficult than just me removing it, but I wanted to double check because she’d lost a lot of blood and I didn’t want to do the wrong thing,” she said.
“So I went to the registrant’s office for support to check if there was anything different I needed to do prior to doing that.
“In the office he kind of referred to a magic trick. [He] likened it to, ‘well, have you seen the trick where the woman pulls flowers out of her vagina in Benidorm? Well, that’s basically what you do.’”
A seeming reference to a famous magic show in the Spanish resort, dancer and illusionist Sticky Vicky was known for pulling objects such as flowers and a lightbulb from herself.
The colleague said he later followed it up with a comment along the lines of, “are you not seeing that magic trick?”
She added: “The woman didn’t know anything about that comment at all, it was said in the office rather than in front of the patient.”
When asked by the panel what she thought of the comment, she replied while sounding close to tears: “I thought it was disgusting. I found that really distressing.
“That was a really traumatic birth with a new mum, and it was just very sexualised comments and very derogatory.”
Another witness giving evidence on Tuesday told the panel that she had felt intimidated while working under Johnson’s management.
“The labour ward itself felt quite toxic,” she said.
“There was a bullying culture.”
Other allegations against Mr Johnson included that he would sometimes disappear without explanation during shifts, with barrister Raj Joshi claiming he was jokingly nicknamed the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ as a result.
A third colleague told the panel that, during one incident whether a mother was losing a lot of blood, the emergency button was pushed to alert staff but Johnson failed to show up despite “nothing else happening”.
Mr Johnson, who has not been present for the hearing, faces 29 misconduct charges including poor management and decision-making shown “by making excuses not to transfer patients to the labour ward”.
The hearing is expected to last four days and will conclude tomorrow.
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