A care home nurse tied an elderly dementia patient to a chair at a Bolton care home.
Registered nurse Beatrice Adjei has now been suspended from the profession after a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel heard she had been in charge at Shannon Court nursing home, Radcliffe Road, Bolton, at the time of the incident. She was fired from the job as a result.
The panel heard that Ms Adjei had restrained a patient - known in reports as resident A - by tying them to a chair and leaving them tied for some time.
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In witness statements published by the NMC after the hearing - which took place last month and has since been made public - a witness observed that Mrs Adjei was sitting with an elderly patient.
The statement, said: “He had a blanket wrapped around him, which she saw was tied around the back of the chair, preventing him from standing up. This was also reported by another care assistant. Mrs Adjei was dismissed from Shannon Court as a result of this.”
Mrs Adjei denied tying the man up.
The witness told the panel: “A generic hospital blanket was rolled up and had been placed under Resident A’s arms, around his chest and tied around the chair. His arms were free.
“Mrs Adjei and the other care assistant were having dinner, giggling and they said, ‘look what we’ve done to your friend’.”
The witness added that the man was trying to get up he and was pushing against the blanket.
The panel also took into account a police statement from the witness dated June 6, 2017 which stated: “When I got home, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had seen and how wrong it was. Nobody should be restraining any of the residents unnecessarily we have training regarding this and there is absolutely no reason to do so.”
Denying tying up the man, Mrs Adjei said that the man was constantly wandering around the home and falling, and that she had him close by on the night in question to ensure he did not have another fall. She said she was the only senior nurse on the Elderly Mental Illness (EMI) unit on the night in question. She said she asked him to sit near her while she completed notes, as she did not want him to wander around. She said that she put the blanket on him and was specifically asked how she put the blanket on.
She told the panel “Resident A was cold, so I placed a blanket on his arms and shoulders. The blanket was not folded.”
The panel determined that Mrs Adjei restrained Resident A by tying him to a chair and allowed him to remain tied to a chair. Another charge found proven by the panel referred to an allegation at a different care home in 2019.
It was found that she allowed an incorrect submission to be made to an interim order panel in allowing her representative to submit that an alleged incident on July, 16 2019 was ‘the first made against you in a long and unblemished career as a registered nurse’. The panel found that Mrs Adjei’s actions did fall significantly short of the standards expected of a registered nurse.
They imposed a suspension order for a period of 12 months.
The current management at Shannon Court declined to comment on hearing results. At the time of the incident the home was under different management.
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