Medical chiefs hit care home nurse with order

18th September 2012. The Priory Hospital in Dewsbury, the town where Cpl Jake Hartley of 3rd Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment, grew up, has named a ward the Hartley Ward. Pictured his mother Nathalie Taylor.

Mildred Bennette was handed a Conditions of Practice order on January 8 at a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel review hearing for her conduct while working at The Priory Hospital, Dewsbury, in 2013.

She currently works as a voluntary support worker at Woodfield Grange Care Home, Greetland.

The hearing was told that while working as a nurse at the Dewsbury hospital, Ms Bennette did not give one patient their prescribed doses of clozapine, an anti-psychotic drug used to treat schizophrenia.

The panel also heard that just one month later, she incorrectly documented that another patient should stop receiving sodium valporate, meaning they missed prescribed doses of the drug, which is given to patients with epilepsy or bipolar disorder.

Ms Bennette, a nurse of 10 years, currently works as a voluntary support worker at Woodfield Grange Care Home.

The NMC judgement said: “The panel considered that you have made considerable efforts to remedy your failings in so far as you have been able to do so.” But the panel said there remained a risk of repetition.

The NMC judgement said: “The panel therefore decided that a finding of current impairment is justified on the grounds of public protection.”

Ms Bennette was originally given a nine-month Conditions of Practice order in November 2014.

After an extension, that order was reviewed and she was given an Interim Suspension order in November 2015 as part of an investigation into an allegation she didn’t disclose her order to her employer in 2014. Her new Conditions of Pracitce order will last for sixth months and means she is banned from administering medications unless directly supervised.