Care home matron formed mock jazz band to agitate residents, inquiry told

A care home matron formed a mock “jazz band” to agitate elderly residents as part of a regime of bullying and practical jokes, a hearing has been told.

Maureen Sheikh, 60, launched a campaign of noise, nuisance and japery to intimidate patients and colleagues at St Mary’s Nursing Home in Church Chase, Chester-le-Street, it has been claimed.

In one bizarre incident described to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), Sheikh led staff in a parade banging pots and pans with wooden spoons and blowing party hooters.

Sheikh was the matron in charge of the home for 11 years, but she was sacked in September 2007 after healthcare assistant Joyce Redpath reported her to head management claiming she had “just had enough”.

Giving evidence to an NMC hearing yesterday, Mrs Redpath branded Sheikh a “bully” who taunted residents at the home for fun.

“They were just bullies. They liked to make fun out of the residents, liked to see if they got aggressive or abusive. They used to think it was funny,” she said.

The NMC heard Sheikh also intimidated staff who worked at the home.

Mrs Redpath told how dead mice were once put in the laundry for one particular staff member, who was scared of such things, to find.

Sheikh discouraged whistle-blowing in the home and made staff wear name badges reading “grass” – or worse – if they made a complaint, it was claimed.

But Mrs Redpath said the jazz band incident in June 2007 proved the final straw.

“I heard Maureen call over the Tannoy for the Chester-le-Street jazz band to come to the office,” she said.

“They all went into the office and the next thing they came out with pots and pans, wooden spoons and party hooters and went upstairs to one of the resident’s rooms and started banging them.”

Mrs Redpath added: “I said to the senior carer aren’t you going to do something? But she said she was too frightened in case she was intimidated or bullied.”

Mrs Redpath said she had “just had enough” and wrote a letter to the organisation’s head office.

The hearing was told that the letter led to an investigation and Sheikh was invited to attend an internal disciplinary hearing in September 2007, but was dismissed in her absence after failing to turn up, claiming she was stressed.

Her case has now been referred to her regulating body for the hearing which is expected to last five days.

John Lucarotti, for the NMC, said the allegations were “extraordinary” and staff and residents at the home were “subjected to a campaign of practical jokes and bullying which belongs more in a school playground rather than the confines of a nursing home”.

Sheikh, a mother-of-two whose husband is a doctor, qualified in 1970.

She denies 13 charges she acted in an inappropriate manner towards staff and deliberately put the well-being of residents at risk when she worked at the home between 2000 and 2007.

The hearing continues.