Nurse struck off after 'Grand High Witch' cakes jibe

The nurse insulted colleagues and put patients at risk, the tribunal found

A senior nurse, who taunted a colleague by giving out cake bars in wrappers bearing the image of a witch, has been struck off.

Sam Jamieson-Davies admitted 14 charges and was found guilty of a further 23 at a two-week hearing of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).

The Portsmouth nurse referred to the colleague as "witch hunt co-ordinator" and distributed cakes with a picture of the Grand High Witch from Roald Dahl's novel The Witches, the council said.

The NMC also found she put patients at risk and showed signs of "deep-seated personality or attitudinal problems" in several incidents from 2017 to 2019.

The witch jibe and other actions were directed at a senior nursing colleague at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust, the NMC determined.

On one occasion, Ms Jamieson-Davies told her: “You wouldn’t require fixed working if you weren’t such a passive wife.”

She also swore at the colleague, failed to prepare her for a patient safety meeting and dismissed her concerns about a patient who had not been given insulin.

Several failings involved patients' blood sugar therapy, the NMC found.

Insulin records were not kept and a patient's insulin was delayed for two hours with Ms Jamieson-Davies announcing: "I don't give a [swearword]."

On one occasion, the band 7 nurse failed to respond to an alarm set off by a fire in a microwave, proclaiming: "Let them burn."

She failed to arrange overnight cover on a stroke ward, left a newly-arrived colleague unsupervised on an acute bay and lied about arranging scans.

She also grabbed a nurse by the collar and pushed them against a wall, saying "If you leave, I'm going to kill you", the NMC determined.

It concluded: "The medication errors and the lack of action during a fire alarm placed patients at a real risk of harm.

"The panel heard during oral evidence how colleagues and members of the public were appalled."