Former Lerwick nurse suspended after admitting four charges
A nurse who worked in Lerwick’s Gilbert Bain Hospital has been suspended for 12 months following charges of misconduct.
Giak Siau Abernethy admitted all four charges against her, which resulted in the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) suspending her for a year. Ms Abernethy did not attend the Edinburgh hearing in person.
The charges against Ms Abernethy include reports of conducting herself in an “inappropriate manner” towards two patients on 5th September 2014, authorising a “patient to self-medicate when it was not clinically justified” and destroying a “patient self-medication record”.
Ms Abernethy also admitted a charge of incorrectly setting a patient’s IV drip, “which resulted in 500 ml of IV fluids being administered over six hours, instead of the prescribed 12 hours.”
The NMC report shows that Ms Abernethy “was described by a colleague as being aggressive and inappropriate” and “that she came across as being very stressed and intimidating”.
NMC documents also show that in the case of advising a patient to self-medicate, Ms Abernethy “came across short fused” before telling the patient “that due to staffing levels not every patient could be given their tablets at the time they wished.”
Ms Abernethy then told the patient that they “had nothing to do but sit and watch the clock all day” and that “this was not a hotel”. This caused the patient to become extremely upset.
She then proceeded to tell the patient that she could take her Parkinson’s medication herself.
Ms Abernethy accepted that “her conduct amounted to a serious departure from the NMC’s Code”.
She was dismissed by NHS Shetland in December 2014 “on the grounds of gross misconduct”.
