Now-former nurse Melanie Hayes was originally only handed a six-month suspension.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has been ordered to issue a striking-off order against a nurse who described her colleagues as “spear chuckers”.
It comes after now-former nurse Melanie Hayes was only handed a six-month suspension for making several racist slurs against colleagues over a number of years.
The regulator very quickly said it was unhappy with that decision by the panel and decided to refer itself to its own professional regulator, the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
The high court has now overturned the original sanction and ordered a striking-off order be handed out instead to Ms Hayes.
Deplorable.
According to the report, on her final day as a mental health nurse for Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust in May 2018, Ms. Hayes told coworkers she was glad to be leaving as she preferred working with a “team of white people” followed by several other racial slurs.
This sparked an investigation and several other racist comments were revealed.
In 2012, while working at the Nottinghamshire NHS Foundation Trust, Ms. Hayes told colleagues she had “had enough of those lazy bastard spear chuckers”.
The original Fitness to Practice panel concluded that “Mrs Hayes’s actions amounted to a serious departure from the standards expected and would be considered deplorable by the public and fellow practitioners.”
They went on to justify a six-month suspension order by adding the “misconduct was difficult to remediate but not impossible”.
A more appropriate outcome.
Responding to the decision Andrea Sutcliffe, Chief Executive and Registrar at the NMC, said: “I’m very sorry that our original decision wasn’t the right one, and I know how much concern that caused.
“I hope people feel reassured that by recognising this and referring our decision to the PSA, we’ve now reached an appropriate outcome, with the High Court deciding that Ms Hayes should be removed from our register.
“We’re absolutely committed to learning from this and making sure that we have suitable guidance and training in place to enable us and our independent Fitness to Practise panels to make the right decisions in cases concerning racism or any other form of discrimination.”
