A nurse, Penelope Williams, has been struck off the nursing register after her secret lover, a patient, died in a car. Williams had been employed as a registered nurse at a renal hemodialysis unit in Wrexham since October 2019 when the incident occurred.
According to a report by the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s fitness to practice committee, on the evening of January 8, 2022, the patient, known as Patient A, was found partially clothed in the back of a car and later died from heart failure and chronic kidney disease triggered by a medical episode. Williams failed to call an ambulance when the patient became unwell, as revealed during a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) hearing.
Patient A was a renal patient receiving regular dialysis who also had heart problems. Earlier that evening, Williams had been at a colleague’s house and left later after socialising. At 11:56 pm, she called her colleague “crying and distressed,” attempting to explain that someone had died.
Williams’s colleague advised her to call an ambulance and later met her at the student nursing car park of Spire Hospital in Wrexham. Upon arrival, the colleague discovered Patient A in the back of the car and went to check on him. Realizing he was unresponsive, the colleague called for an ambulance and the police, as Mrs. Williams had not done so.
The 999 call handler instructed the colleague to perform CPR. When Patient A was removed from the car, his trousers were down. After his subsequent death, Williams told the police and paramedics at the scene that the patient had sent her a message on Facebook, informing her that he was unwell, prompting her to meet him.
However, on February 17, 2022, during a formal health board meeting, Williams denied any sexual relationship with the patient. She claimed that they had only met in his car to talk for about 30-45 minutes, and she recalled him suddenly groaning and dying.
During a local disciplinary hearing on May 19, 2022, Williams admitted to having an intimate relationship with the patient, which she had failed to disclose to her employer. Last week, at a virtual hearing of the Nursing and Midwifery Council, Williams received a striking-off order and an interim suspension order for 18 months.
The fitness to practice panel determined that Williams’s failure to disclose the relationship, as well as her limited understanding of the potential damage to nursing’s reputation and public safety, amounted to serious misconduct. Consequently, she was ultimately struck off the nursing register for bringing the profession into disrepute.
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