Health and Disability Commission: ED nurse breached code when he touched patient's breast, looked in another's underwear

The male nurse rubbed one woman's breast and looked in the underwear of another. Photo / 123RF

An emergency department nurse who looked down a patient's underwear and rubbed another patient's breast has been found in breach of his professional code.

Despite denying almost everything, the man has been found in breach of the Health and Disability Code and could now face legal action.

Unusually, the Health and Disability Commission's full report on the case has been withheld "due to the specific vulnerability of the complainants and the nature of the offending".

The name of the DHB or the hospital where he worked have not been published, but some details can be reported.

The first woman, who has chronic endometriosis, was admitted to the ED with severe abdominal pain. She complained that the man lifted her clothing to look at her breasts and down her underwear, and that there was inappropriate physical contact when he was providing other care.

The second woman was a patient in the DHB's medical short stay unit, after presenting to the ED because her feeding tube had fallen out. That woman has possible conversion disorder with paraplegia, dyphasia, blindness and urinary incontinence.

She complained that while the nurse was changing the IV dressing on her arm, he put his hand in her bra and rubbed her breast.

The nurse denied most of the women's allegations, but deputy Health and Disability Commissioner Dr Vanessa Caldwell believed them, saying the patients' evidence "was to be preferred over the evidence of the nurse".

She found that "the nurse deliberately and inappropriately touched and/or viewed intimate parts of the first complainant's body on several occasions", and that he put his hand in the second woman's clothing and rubbed the skin in the area of her breast.

In both cases he breached the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers' Rights because his actions amounted to a "serious failure' to provide services in a manner that respected their dignity.

He also breached the code by failing to document the care provided to the second patient.

Caldwell also found he breached the code by failing to give the first woman information about the nature of her abdominal examination, including whether and how her clothes would be moved. She could not give informed consent without that information.

The deputy commissioner recommended that he apologises to both patients in writing.

The nurse has since stopped practising but if he reapplies for a practising certificate, the Nursing Council should look at whether it would be appropriate to return to nursing and under what conditions, she said.

The nurse will also be referred to the commission's director of proceedings, who will look at whether to take legal action.

Caldwell found the DHB did not breach the code, but she recommended it look into training for ED staff on issues around chaperones, communication, consent and documentation.