No more porridge for Mummy Bear

A psychiatric nurse, involved in a ménage à trois, has been struck off the nursing register. Jayne Reed got up to all sorts of seedy shenanigans with a 46-year-old and an 18-year-old patient. The Nursing and Midwifery Council heard that during the shenanigans, Reed would be "mummy bear" while the 46-year-old man... I wont go into details but daddy bear and baby bear were involved if you get my drift.

What struck me in the report in The Sun was that Ms Reed said: "I am angry at the mental health trust who failed to notice the decline in my practice and professionalism." Talk about passing the buck. This lady is off the scale. It's a bit like saying, "I drove at 120mph and lost my license. I'm now angry at the police who failed to notice my rubbish driving." She crossed the boundaries and she knows it.

She should be angry at herself for using patients for her own sexual gratification, angry at herself for thinking she could get away with it by blaming the Trust, and angry at herself for not thinking about the effects of her actions.

No more porridge for you Mummy Bear.

This sounds like a Benny Hill episode

It sounds more like something out of a Benny Hill skit, or something from one of those top shelf products you find in the local video store. As far as I can see, this story has nothing to do with medicine, or nursing.

The Shropshire Star covered the story of Anne Rogers-Hughes, a psychiatric nurse who had a four-month affair with a patient. During that time, she provided topless massages and described him to colleagues as a “stud”. I thought this kind of activity went on in seedy back street 'establishments' where participants usually need the NHS for the treatment of STDs.

Rogers-Hughes' bosses also got to hear the tawdry details of how she had sex with her patient twice a week at his home, and how she took him to see a GP to ask for Viagra while she sat in the waiting room.

I don't think it took much deliberating to decide to strike her off. The Nursing and Midwifery Council found Anne Rogers-Hughes "... guilty of engaging in a sexual relationship with Service User A between July and October 2007 and failing to notify managers of the affair."

So the nurse isn't working anymore. Big deal. I reckon she should be in jail, guility of a sex crime. Apparently the sex was mutually consensual. It seems like patients are only vulnerable when it suits the docs and nurses.

This doesn't sound like intensive care to me

Those who are mentally unstable and who might feel like they want to end it all, need a bit of TLC and some good old common sense from friends and associates to come through what is probably a quagmire of emotions.

What they don't need are tools with which they can fulfil their deathwish. So it was a bit surprising to read on psychminded.co.uk about a nurse who handed a holdall strap to a patient who was being held at a psychiatric intensive care unit in Dundee, Scotland.

The patient Michael Dodds took his own life using the strap. What was the point then in sectioning him in the first place? If psychiatric intensive care units are supposed to give psychiatric intensive care, then I believe there's something seriously wrong with either the description of the facility or the personnel who run it.

Psychiatric nurse 'filmed up women's skirts'

The Western Morning News in the west country, has reported on a psychiatric nurse who went around town filming up women's skirts.

It seems there are loads of these types of stories that come out of the psychiatric swing doors, or should that be locked doors? Sure, my admiration for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has a bearing on my view, and reflects in what I write about psychiatric nurses. Funny thing is, while Cuckoo's Nest was a movie based on Ken Kesey's brilliant book, it turns out there really are psychiatric nurses like Nurse Ratched and nurses who get into all sorts of dubious stuff, like looking up women's skirts, sexually assaulting patients, rape, and flashing.

Confession time. I knew someone who had an experience in a mental hospital and I didn't believe them. They were having problems, had gone in there for help and ended up getting treated in a way that doesn't belong anywhere near a hospital. I thought the 'experience' I was told about was a bit of made-up stuff that was part of the 'illness'. Turned out the experience was real.

It's a fine line that's walked between believing something someone says and chucking it out just because the person's a bit 'out-to-lunch.'

Please don't dismiss what a patient says. Hence the blog.