NHS nurse wrongly suspended for two years after patient claimed she was pregnant with his child

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/06/nhs-nurse-suspended-patient-claimed-pregnant-jessica-thorpe/

by Fox_9810

21 comments
  1. The management of the NHS isn’t fit for purpose. I love the NHS but it needs a complete overhaul and restructuring with a focus on care.

  2. Trust took 3 days to suspend her but 15 months for a disciplinary hearing, and then another 15 months for her to receive information about the result of it? Sounds exactly like our wasteful NHS.

  3. One of the issues here seems to be that they seem to have a one size fits all safeguarding process for staff who come into contact with vulnerable patients for limited periods and ones who are in contact with the same patients regularly and for long periods?

    That seems a bit nuts to me. Surely the latter might be a bit more specialised and the Chief Executive would just be informed of some panel decision or something?

  4. This the work of bots or what?

    NHS shaming, again… Easy to moan, hard to please, NHS is shit until you really need it bullshit!

  5. And they assumed the guy was telling the truth. He was a patient in a mental health facility so there was zero chance this was a fantasy inside his own head./s

    Unbelievable.

  6. And the NHS wonders why NHS workers are going abroad in droves. Poor woman deserves every penny!

  7. You wouldn’t think that a hospital full of doctors would take 29 months to establish if someone is pregnant, and the paternity. 

    29 months of suspension due to unsubstantiated claims by someone who’s so mentally unwell that they have been detained for everyone’s safety. Unreal. 

  8. Wow, the NHS is fucking demented and kafkaesque, some choice quotes.

    >The claim was made by a patient on Ward Z – a secure facility for men with [mental disorders and illnesses](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/mental-health/) who have come into contact with the criminal justice system.

    Mentally ill patient in a psych ward.

    >the allegation of inappropriate behaviour had not been upheld due to a lack of “conclusive evidence”.

    >However, Ms Thorpe never received a letter confirming the outcome of the hearing, Judge Loy said.

    >After the disciplinary hearing, Ms Thorpe was later told that the panel had not yet reached a conclusion because the trust’s chief operating officer had “subsequently reviewed” the witness statements and had “concerns”, the tribunal heard.

    So found innocent but kept on suspension anyway.

    >She was then told that she would not be returning to work until the police investigation into Patient X’s death had been completed and the trust’s serious incident process procedure had concluded.

    Patient X had died while she was suspended. Nothing to do with her.

    >The trust argued Ms Thorpe resigned because she wanted to “pursue her career as a social media influencer”, but she told the tribunal she only began the “hobby” because she had been suspended.

    Wow, what sacks of shit. Like she was going to just sit around twiddling her thumbs for 3 years.

    Management must have really had it in for her.

  9. Am I the only one only one baffled by how the suspension went for 2 years? Surely after 9 months when a baby failed to materialise that should have been quite conclusive?!?

  10. “The claim was made by a patient on Ward Z – a secure facility for men with mental disorders and illnesses who have come into contact with the criminal justice system.”

    My wife is a mental health nurse and this shite happens all the time. Once there was a police involved, because patient said that nurses stole scratch card winning £300k.

    Why was this poor person even suspended, and why it becomes a national news?

  11. Grounds for suspension aside, Anything more than 9 months suspension would have been considered excessive, for obvious reasons.

  12. Such a broad term generalising management like this.

    You got your nursing wards, then you got the nurse managers of wards, then you got managers of those ward managers usually managing multiple ward managers of a number of wards of similar specialities. E.g Gynae & maternity

    Then you have their managers who usually sit on the top of a division e.g. surgical, medical, etc.

    Now that is nursing clinical management.

    Then you have operational side.
    Then you got catering, and you got estates and you got portending, and you got radiographic, physio, doctors

    Lots of other aspects and when you say stuff like your generalisation it doesn’t go into what it means to be a manger in the NHS because there are literally hundreds of different kinds of management relating to the specialities of just one hospital.
    All this just tells me you don’t know what you’re talking about.

    And I’ll probs be neg voted for this. But it such a short sited comment usually by people that wanna privatise without realising private hospitals have very similar level of management as NHS hospitals.

    Totally agree on having proper competencies for management but in every business you don’t really have management skills and don’t develop them truly until you sit in a management position.

  13. The judge also felt sorry for the trust because she resigned when she got offered her job back

  14. >She was then told that she would not be returning to work until the police investigation into Patient X’s death had been completed and the trust’s serious incident process procedure had concluded.

    This specific bit actually sounds pretty reasonable by the trust, to be honest.

  15. So was she actually pregnant anyway? And if she was surely a DNA test at birth would have solved the matter and if she wasn’t pregnant then the claims make no sense.
    I’m a first year nursing student and reading this stuff just affirms that I really do not want to work for the NHS.

  16. I can’t believe they took the word of a mentally ill criminal over that of their own nurse.

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