Nurse loses right to practice after being found to have stolen money from patients

A nurse has been struck off the register after being found to have stolen money from patients. Fiona Mary Quinn (nurse registration pin number 105233) was found by the fitness-to-practise committee of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland to have taken money from one or more of the residents of a hospital in October 2009.

The decision to erase her name from the register of nurses and midwives was confirmed by the High Court in November and has just been published on the nursing board's website.

The website said she had been found guilty of professional misconduct, for having stolen money from one or more residents of an unnamed hospital on one or more unspecified dates in early October 2009, and mid-October 2009.

Inquiries
The fitness-to-practise inquiries are held in private, but decisions are published at regular intervals later on the website of the regulatory body. It does not provide the addresses of the nurses who come before its fitness-to-practise committee or the name of their employers.

The nurses are identified only by their names and registration pin numbers.

Five recent decisions have been published. In another case, Ann Patricia McNulty (pin number 40003) had her name erased from the register for failing to comply with conditions set down by the board previously. It found she was or had been suffering from a physical or mental disability rendering her unfit to engage in the practice of nursing.

Rose Gill (pin number 2072) had her name erased from the register for professional misconduct, having failed to demonstrate competent nursing practice while undertaking a return to nursing practice course in the Centre for Nursing and Midwifery Education in 2008 and a placement in an unnamed hospital.

Two nurses were also censured by the board.

Lucia Maria Goretti Flanagan (pin number 22086) was censured for taking prednisolone, a steroid, without permission from the hospital and using it herself.

She did so while acting as a nurse and/or night supervisor in a hospital between January 2008 and February 2008. Conditions were attached to the retention of her name on the nurses register.

Jacqueline O’Riordan (Murphy) (pin number 53710) was censured for administering 0.5ml of sterile water intermuscularly to a female patient though it was not prescribed and was inappropriate.

She therefore put the health/welfare of the patient at risk, the board concluded.