Dementia Nurse Struck Off For Camera Prank

A nurse was kicked out of the profession yesterday after she urged an assistant to put a brown paper bag over a dementia patient’s head and then took a photo with her mobile phone.

Debra Phillips, 36, cut out two eyeholes and drew a smile on the bag before the care assistant placed it on the elderly man’s head, it was said.

She was seen pointing her camera phone at the patient and heard saying “let’s take a picture” before showing the picture to colleagues and sending it to her boyfriend, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard.

Phillips claimed she had been playing “peek-a-boo” with the man, known as Patient A. But yesterday the NMC found her fitness to practice was impaired by reason of her misconduct.

Jillian Alderwick, the chairman of the panel, said it had no option but to strike Phillips’s name from the register. She would not be allowed to return to the profession for a minimum of five years.

The patient was in his late seventies when he was admitted to Arrowe Park Hospital, in Upton, Wirral, in 2004.

Michelle Lawler, a student nurse, said she saw Phillips and Ann Roberts, a care assistant, laughing at the patient and heard Phillips say: “Let’s take a picture.”

Phillips admitted the prank in an interview but said the patient had asked to try on the “mask” and she was trying to cheer him up. She also admitted taking a picture but said she had not shown it to colleagues.

Miss Alderwick told the hearing in central London hearing: “The registrant failed in her fundamental duty to protect Patient A’s dignity. Her conduct amounted to psychological abuse.”