A nurse who admitting failing to complete an assessment and subsequent care plan for a Caerphilly care home resident will not face any further disciplinary action, a hearing panel has concluded.
Daryl Jenkins was working as deputy manager at the Craig-y-Trwyn Care Home in Wattsville when a resident’s pressure sores went unmonitored in July 2013.
Assessments and care plans help to assist the care of pressure sores, and the Nursing and Midwifery Council panel heard evidence of how the Craig-y-Trwyn resident was left for two months without regular assessment, which “was a serious omission” on Jenkins’ part, and “had the potential to cause serious harm” to the resident.
At the NMC hearing in Cardiff, the three-strong panel ruled that Jenkins’ failures amounted to misconduct and had “fallen below the standards expected of a registered nurse.”
In summarising, the panel noted that the particular incident was isolated in Jenkins’ 45 year nursing career, and that his attendance at a skin and tissue training course had helped to reduce the risk of such failures being repeated, therefore his fitness to practise was not impaired.
No sanctions were imposed.
Jenkins, who was dismissed in August 2014, had also admitted to failing to perform half hourly checks on a patient who fell at the Craig-y-Trwyn home in January that year.
The panel heard how Jenkins had only performed hourly checks on the patient, but that he used his “clinical judgement” in placing a healthcare assistant in the same room as the patient, while remaining in the nearby proximity.
After conducting initial observations, Jenkins contacted the GP an hour after the fall, and the NMC concluded that Jenkins’ departure from what was expected of a nurse was not, in this instance, serious enough to amount to misconduct.