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Nurses Too Scared to Oust Bullying Colleagues

Philip Brown finished his first shift at the nursing home with a sick feeling in his stomach. The specialist nurse was deeply depressed by what he had seen.

Elderly patients were tied to beds to stop them moving around and others were lying in their own filth. The frail and vulnerable were being bullied by more aggressive residents and there was food rotting on dirty work surfaces. All this in a home staffed by trained nurses.

His description of shameful neglect and abuse is all too horrifyingly familiar these days.

But what makes his story even more shocking is that when he did the right thing and reported to the authorities what he’d seen, it took seven years for action to be taken against those involved.

Furthermore, rather than being lauded for his action, Philip was ostracised by his colleagues and spent three years fighting charges against him.

A third of nurses fear the consequences if they blow the whistle on unacceptable practices, according to a survey published two weeks ago by the charity Public Concern At Work.

This fear of reprisals is even greater in the private sector, where 65 per cent of staff are concerned about speaking out.

Reading Philip Brown’s story, it is easy to under-stand their anxiety. When he started at Bamburgh Court, a private nursing home in Tyneside in July 2000, he was looking forward to working with patients again after having spent the previous ten years lecturing in nursing at Northumbria University.

‘I wanted to get back to clinical work – to look after patients in the way I had been trained to,’ he says.

But at Bamburgh Court he found a horrifying gap between elderly care theory and practice. ‘Even after just one shift, it was obvious many things were seriously wrong.

‘My colleagues seemed happy to let patients sit in their own faeces all day’, he recalls. ‘And instead of lifting patients, they would drag them like sacks of potatoes.’

But it was the attitude of Anne Rigby, a nurse and general manager of the home, that shocked him the most.

‘She just didn’t seem to care. One of the residents had a colostomy bag. During our first handover meeting, Anne Rigby told me the bag made her stomach turn, so she didn’t empty it.

‘I just couldn’t believe a nurse was refusing to help. There were days when I would come to work and the lady’s bag would have burst and she would be covered in her own excrement.

‘No one at the home took any responsibility for standards of care. But bit by bit I started to address the issues.

‘The management team obviously liked what I was doing because two months after I started they promoted me to “charge nurse” and sent me on a management training course. I came back with plenty of ideas about what needed to change.’

Here his story takes a bizarre twist. When Philip requested an extra dozen incontinence pads per shift, explaining that without them patients were at risk of developing sores, the management team told him it was time for him ‘to move on’.

‘I was lost for words,’ recalls Philip. ‘Was the home really putting cash before patient care? After a period of reflection, I decided to report my observations to the nurses’ regulatory body – the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).

‘I told them about the routine negligence carried out by registered nurses and assumed it would take action.’

It has – seven years later. Meanwhile, Philip endured the personal price of whistleblowing.

‘Within days of me leaving the home, I discovered my former colleagues had reported me for not protecting the safety of a patient.

‘As a result, I was barred from working for six weeks. I had no income and was forced to sell my home for £20,000 less than its value. It was a very painful time.’

After preliminary investigations into the apparent ’ wrongdoing’, he was allowed to work, but it took three years for the NMC to organise a hearing.

‘I continued to work as a nurse, but it was difficult. You’d think the NHS and care homes would encourage whistleblowers – the whole point is that we raise issues before they lead to accidents or fatal errors.

‘But it’s the opposite – people see you as a trouble-maker. My career was being put at stake for doing the right thing.’

The charges against Philip were eventually thrown out: the official conducting the hearing said Philip was ‘a moral and honest practitioner who put patients above himself, and served his country in a distinguished way’.

With his case over, Philip assumed the NMC would ask him for his evidence and finally investigate further.

‘But instead it told me to gather the evidence myself. I spent the next 15 months tracking people down. I took statements from former employees, and gathered information from relatives.

‘I discovered that before I ever worked there, several residents had been assaulted and there were complaints of neglect. Yet each year, inspectors consistently found nothing wrong.

‘The trouble is, the home always knew when the inspectors were coming. There was a cosy relationship between them.’

Four years ago, Philip sent his evidence to the NMC and the police. As a result, the Commission for Social Care Inspection – the care homes watchdog – organised outside inspectors to make surprise visits.

These inspectors reported being ‘visibly shaken’ by the conditions at Bamburgh Court and described them as the worst they’d ever seen.

The home was ordered to clean up its act within hours; Anne Rigby was suspended and resigned on grounds of ill-health three months later.

Philip might have heaved a sigh of relief at this point – finally the case was coming to an end. But a year later, a journalist from the Nursing-Standard contacted him after receiving a press release from Ashbourne Homes, the company which then owned Bamburgh Court, saying Philip had been found guilty of abuse of the elderly.

‘That was a total lie, but it just showed me how nasty these companies could be,’ he says.

He was finally vindicated last month, when Anne Rigby was struck off the nursing register.

‘But as much as being proved right is gratifying, that was never my ultimate goal,’ says Philip. ‘My battle was about protecting the right of vulnerable people to safe and dignified care. Why should that be so difficult in 21st-century Britain?’

Why, he asks, are whistleblowers treated so badly? ‘My career has spanned 30 years – I’ve worked in forensic psychiatry, as a tutor and even for the UKCC (the predecessor of the NMC), sitting on disciplinary hearings for five years. You would have thought my complaints would have been taken seriously.’

Today he works as a nurse specialising in children and adolescents with mental health issues. ‘I’m proud that I kept fighting for what was right. But I now understand why so many nurses turn the other way. Look at what happens when you don’t.’

The NMC said: ‘This was a complicated case involving allegations against several individuals, including Anne Rigby, who had subsequent complaints made against her between 2003 and 2006.

The later complaints would have contributed to the time between the initial case being referred to a hearing, and the actual hearing date.’

Southern Cross, which acquired Bamburgh Court in late 2005, said: ‘The company has made a significant investment in the home. The home now offers a very high standard of care. This is supported by the latest inspection report.’