An NHS nurse who took part in a sexual relationship with a patient failed to call an ambulance when he died in the back of his car with his trousers down during a secret late night rendezvous, a disciplinary committee has heard.
Penelope Williams had been having a year-long affair with the dialysis patient when he suffered heart failure while they were together in a hospital car park.
Ms Williams, who had hidden the relationship from her managers, failed to call 999 and instead rang a colleague who turned up and performed CPR, the panel heard. Now, the nurse has been struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council who warned she had “brought the nursing profession into disrepute”.
The panel heard Ms Williams started working for the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board in North Wales as a registered nurse in a renal haemodialysis unit in October 2019.
Her patient – known only as Patient A – was one of the unit’s regulars. Ms Williams and Patient A began a sexual relationship in January 2021 and she did not tell bosses about it, the panel was told.
In January of the following year, a colleague – known only as Colleague One – received a phone call from Ms Williams who was “crying and distressed” and asking for help because “someone had died”, the committee heard. The colleague told her to call an ambulance, but Ms Williams failed to do so, the panel was told.
The colleague later arrived at the student nursing car park at Spire private hospital, in Wrexham, where she met Ms Williams and could see Patient A in the back of a car with his “trousers down”, the committee was told.
Colleague one went to check Patient A who was unresponsive, so she called 999 asking for police and ambulance before starting CPR, the panel heard. He died from “heart failure and chronic kidney disease triggered by a medical episode”, the committee was told.