A nurse has been struck off by the UK regulator for nursing and midwifery after a patient with whom she was having a secret relationship died while in his car with her.
Penelope Williams ignored advice to call an ambulance after the man collapsed in the vehicle at a car park in Wrexham, north Wales, in January 2022, a hearing was told.
The death of the man, known as Patient A, was listed as “heart failure and chronic kidney disease triggered by a medical episode”. He was found in the car by Williams’s colleague partially clothed, the hearing was told.
A fitness to practise panel was told Patient A received regular treatment at the Betsi Cadwaladr health board, where Williams worked as a general nurse on a renal unit.
On the night of the man’s death, Williams went to the home of one of her colleagues, referred to as Colleague 1, before meeting with Patient A. Shortly before midnight, the panel heard Colleague 1 received a phone call from Williams, who was “crying and distressed and asking for help as she tried to explain that someone had died”.
Colleague 1 advised Williams to call an ambulance.
Upon meeting Williams in the car park, Colleague 1 found Patient A partially clothed and unresponsive. They then called 999 and asked for the police and ambulance, which Williams had not done. Patient A was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.
Williams initially told police and a paramedic in attendance that she had gone to the scene to meet Patient A after he messaged her on Facebook that he was unwell.
In a later statement to police, she admitted they were in a sexual relationship and had previously arranged to meet at the car park that evening.
She had denied this in a formal meeting with the health board in February, saying that “she met with Patient A and sat at the back of his car for about 30-45 minutes just talking”, before he started groaning and suddenly died.
At a local disciplinary hearing with the health board in May, Williams admitted to the relationship and not calling an ambulance even after being advised to.
She was dismissed from her job with “immediate effect”.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel determined Williams’s failure to disclose the relationship, and her limited insight about the damage her relationship could cause to nursing’s reputation or its effect on public safety, amounted to serious misconduct.
She was ultimately struck off for bringing the profession into disrepute, with the panel concluding: “Mrs Williams’s actions were significant departures from the standards expected of a registered nurse, and are fundamentally incompatible with her remaining on the register.
“The panel was of the view that the findings in this particular case demonstrate that Mrs Williams’s actions were so serious that to allow her to continue practising would undermine public confidence in the profession and in the NMC as a regulatory body.”
• This article was amended on 6 July 2023. An earlier version said that the incident happened in the patient’s car “outside the Spire hospital in Wrexham”. This was based on information provided in the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) fitness to practise hearing determination. The NMC later said that the information was incorrect, and that the incident had no connection to this particular hospital (Spire Yale Hospital). The article has been corrected accordingly.
