A TEARFUL Farnham nurse was struck off on Tuesday for placing patients and colleagues in danger by ignoring advice and ploughing ahead with her own ideas for treatment.
Dilys Turner, 41, who had a reputation for using colourful language at work, made a series of "professional judgements" overruling doctors' orders and breaching safety protocol at the hospital where she worked.
In one instance a top surgical consultant was forced to cancel a weekend sailing and rush back to the North Hampshire Hospital, Basingstoke, after the staff nurse ignored his instructions regarding treating a private patient.
A conduct committee found that a string of practices employed by Turner were outmoded and even risked her own health.
The mother-of-two was also found to have "inappropriately" allowed a patient to visit her home after his discharge, and to have accepted his gift of a Chinese meal for her family before driving him to London to catch a train to Scotland.
She also agreed to take £100 in cash from the patient – using it to buy wine as a thank you to ward staff who had cared for him – but again risking her professional integrity.
Turner admitted most of the allegations concerning her work on the hospital's high-dependency C2 surgical ward in 2001.
And the Nursing and Midwifery Council's professional conduct committee found the remainder proved over a three-day hearing.
The catalogue of failings were all found to be professional misconduct.
Valerie Morrison, the committee chairman, said: "You have failed to demonstrate your ability to practise as a professional nurse.
"And you have shown a completely irresponsible attitude and a total disregard for the policies and procedures there to protect patients, other employees and yourself.
"In doing so you placed them and yourself in danger."
Mrs Morrison said the nurse had used methods that were "out of date" on a modern ward She concluded: "You have fallen far short of the code of standards expected of you in a number of respects."
Turner had risked injury and cross-infection by putting her hands in "sharps boxes" – a bin for used needles – to remove "unofficial" debris and also changed dressings without gloves.
The hearing was told that the nurse left a patient "in agony" after she gave the anti-nausea drug cyclizine down an intravenous line for self-administered painkillers.
And a consultant surgeon ordered that when sutures were removed from his patient, part of the wound should be sealed with steristrips. Turner disagreed.
The consultant was summonsed back to Basingstoke as he was about to board his yacht at Southampton when the patient started bleeding from the "gaping" wound.
Turner joined the North Hampshire Hospital in May 1999 but was suspended pending an investigation regarding the practices that brought her before the committee.
The nurse resigned in October 2001 and took up a post at Winchester Prison – leaving that job this year when she heard she must attend the conduct committee.