A nurse and assistant practitioner have been jailed for a total of ten years and two months after drugging patients for their amusement.
Senior nurse Catherine Hudson, 44, and healthcare worker Charlotte Wilmot, 48, were earlier found guilty of the ill-treatment of stroke patients at Blackpool Victoria Hospital. Catherine Hudson illegally sedated two patients and plotted with junior coworker Charlotte Wilmot to sedate a third.
The dangerous and cruel pair are said to have targeted patients if they disliked them or their relatives, drugging them for an easy life.
Messages between the pair, which were discovered after an inquiry was launched into alleged wrongdoing, revealed how Hudson wrote to her friend that she was going to kill bed 5 and planned to give one patient the best sleep she ever had.
In another message to a coworker, Hudson wrote that she was having a lovely day that she’s had in Blue Bay today. Sedated all the troublemakers.
Hudson, who drugged patients to exert contemptuous power, was sentenced to seven years and two months at Preston Crown Court.
Her colleague Wilmot, who a judge said was involved with two patients but was not the lead offender, received a three-year sentence.
Hudson gave one victim, 76-year-old Aileen Scott, left paralysed by a stroke, an unprescribed sedative to keep her quiet and compliant.
Her son Brian described the two nursing staff as pure evil and said that their treatment was disturbing and that his mother’s treatment would haunt her family for the rest of their lives.
Neither staff member has ever been accused of causing any deaths, although patients on their ward were profoundly sick.
The judge spoke of the distress the relatives of victims would feel and said the case would result in a loss of public confidence in healthcare workers.
In his sentencing remarks, he said they were in a position of trust and responsibility. They offended against vulnerable people in their care over a significant period.
He said there was in each case a risk of harm and that we’ve heard of the risk of sedatives to stroke patients.
He added that the relatives of all those patients would always be distressed at the betrayal of trust and that there would be a loss of public confidence in the NHS.
Police were alerted by hospital chiefs in November 2018 after a student nurse on a work placement said Hudson suggested administering unprescribed zopiclone, a sleeping tablet, to elderly patient Aileen Scott.
Well done to that student nurse because it’s not easy to speak out against people in authority at the beginning of your career.
Some people are so wicked. Imagine what their poor families have been put through, when no doubt these patients were trying to tell them what was happening to them, and no doubt these wicked people were denying their actions.
This appears to be happening a lot these days and patients need to be watching their medications and what’s being given to them, but not all patients are well enough to do that, so old people just get sedated to shut them up and keep them quiet, it’s appalling.
The culture within the NHS needs to change drastically, and I suspect that this has happened to a lot more people than they let on. What is concerning is the possible culture of abuse.
I’ve watched nurses in hospitals and you can see the ones who have no respect for their patients and are smug bullies. Once upon a time, nurses joined the profession to become a nurse because they were dedicated, now they enter for power.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 