A midwife has been suspended after she was found to have used her position to 'jump the queue' for quick blood tests.
A Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) Fitness to Practise Committee issued a suspension period of four months to Jolanta Czapska-Hill, who had worked in the NHS since 1998.
The panel found that she ordered five laboratory tests, involving 24 different types of test, over a 10-month period between August 26, 2018, and May 12, 2019 while at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough.
Three of these were submitted with requester listed as "midwife" and two others as a doctor.
But she was caught out after laboratory staff noted a test had been requested by a person with the same name as the patient.
It was also proven that Mrs Czapska-Hill had incorrectly entered the name of a doctor when filling in an electrical form, which amounted to an abuse of her position, and had accessed her own medical records for non-work-related reasons.
While she argued the incidents were “an error of judgement when unwell and desperate” the panel made clear her actions amounted to misconduct, reports Surrey Live.
The hearing documents read: “Mrs Czapska Hill abused her position as a midwife in the sense that she used that position for her own, personal purposes. She was only able to make the requests because she was a midwife employed by the Trust and, consequently, she knew how to use the Trust’s system.
“Mrs Czapska Hill’s abuse of her position as a midwife in order to prioritise her self-referrals has clearly brought her profession into disrepute. Members of the public do not expect midwives to take advantage of their position in order to 'jump the queue'."
The panel's ruling led to the suspension. However, it said it would be “disproportionate” to strike her off, noting that she'd written letters of apology to clinicians whose names she used to get the tests, and that she had showed previous good character during more than 20 years working at the practice.
She was dismissed by Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust following an internal investigation, but the midwife claimed it “misrepresented” her actions.
The panel also took into account letters written by Mrs Czapska Hill, in Slough, to the NMC, who argued self-referrals were widespread at her workplace; a claim the panel said there was "no evidence" to back up.
She also made remarks asking why she was not stopped earlier after her first self-referral, writing: “‘I do not understand why my first self-referral back in August 2018 did not immediately come to light. My question here is why my employer did not act on them straight away to protect me from doing it again?”
A spokesperson for NHS Frimley Health Foundation Trust said: "We hold our staff to the highest professional standards and act swiftly to investigate all allegations of misconduct, including through our own internal processes and by cooperating with professional bodies such as the Nursing and Midwifery Council."
Mrs Czapska Hill did not attend the hearing and in an email requested for it to be cancelled as she was "unwell" but the NMC three-person panel ruled it was fair to proceed without her.
