Doctor struck off after money requests to Windsor care home resident

Adelina-Cosmina Badici worked as a healthcare assistant at the Windsor care home in 2019

A doctor who called a vulnerable resident at a care home she used to work at to ask for money has been struck off.

Adelina-Cosmina Badici was a health care assistant at the Manor Care Home in Windsor between March and May 2019.

She was dismissed from the home but phoned multiple times to ask for financial assistance in July that year.

The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) said a ban was "proportionate".

A hearing was told the resident, who is bedbound but has full mental capacity, exchanged numbers with Dr Badici before she left the care home.

Dr Badici, who qualified as a doctor in Romania and who did not have a licence to practise in the UK, suggested the resident and her stayed in touch by exchanging phone numbers.

'Cancelled the call'

"I wished her well and said I hoped to hear from her. I didn't save her name into my phone," the resident said.

She said the doctor was "sobbing" during three calls on 15 July and "saying something like 'help me, help me'" but never asked for a specific sum of money.

The resident received another call the next day, on which Dr Badici was "crying a lot and asking something like 'are you going to help me or not?' and saying 'nobody helps me'."

"When I saw her calling a second time I just cancelled the call and that was the end of it," the resident said.

A member of the care home's staff said she had also been asked for money by Dr Badici.

Despite Dr Badici not having a licence to practise, the panel said a ban was appropriate to "uphold public trust and public confidence in the medical profession".

The care home has been contacted to comment.