Nurse, 47, ‘insulted’ care home patients

A ROYTON nurse psychologically abused elderly residents at Shawside Residential and Nursing Home, in Shaw, with a string of demeaning insults, a hearing was told yesterday.

Tracey Fleming (47) told a dementia sufferer he was just a dirty old man who made her sick after he had wet his bed, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard.

After the man, referred to as Patient A, pleaded that he could not help it, she is said to have snapped back: “You shut up. I’m in charge and I can speak to you how I like.”

Fleming then said he ought not call himself a man “because men don’t p—s in the bed”, the hearing was told.

Fleming, of Alendale Drive, Royton, is also accused of repeatedly telling a particularly frail female resident, Patient B, who often wept, that she was a cry baby.

She also left the woman sat on a toilet for more than an hour despite her obvious distress, the panel heard.

When another resident, Patient C, pulled off his urine bag, she allegedly said she would leave him in a wet bed all night so he would develop bed sores and gangrene, and his legs “would have to be amputated”.

Fleming then allegedly told him: ‘No one would be bothered with anybody who had no legs.’

But the nurse, who is not represented at the central London hearing, told the hearing the home was woefully understaffed and that she worked up to 84 hours a week with little supervision.

The incidents are said to have occurred at the 150-bed BUPA home just weeks after Fleming had started work there in June, 2008.

Two care assistants complained about her behaviour to management.

Giving evidence, home manager Joan Walton said that Fleming’s actions can be seen as being psychologically abusive.

“This was considered to be humiliating and intimidating the residents involved,” she said.

She added that Patient B was very emotional and fragile and should only have been left alone on the toilet for a maximum of five minutes.

Fleming, who has been a registered nurse since May, 2007, is charged with verbally abusing three patients at the home in August 2008, and with leaving Patient B on a toilet for an unacceptable period of time.

She denies the charges and says she is fit to practise nursing.

The hearing continues.