LW493: Thomas is a nurse in Old Age Care (OAC), a public nursing home. He was supplied to OAC through Compassion Nursing Agency a week ago: Whistleblowing Law and Practice Assignment, MU, Ireland

Thomas is a nurse in Old Age Care (OAC), a public nursing home. He was supplied to OAC through Compassion Nursing Agency a week ago. On his first day, Thomas was invited to attend his induction meeting. This meeting consisted of him receiving the staff handbook and signing that he had received it. Thomas was instructed that he was to work in The Florence Ward, which had twelve long-term residents with dementia. His primary duty was to administer medication in the afternoon and evenings and the general care of the patients.

The first week that Thomas was working he noticed that on occasion when he came into work in the morning, medication was left beside some of the patients’ beds and that there was no supervised administration of the medication. He also became concerned when he noticed bruising on the upper arms of three of the patients. He had seen a colleague, Ann, pulling some of the patients out of their beds one day when she was dressing them, but he did not approach her as they had previously been in a relationship that had ended on bad terms.

That Friday, when Thomas was leaving work, he tried to speak to his line manager, Claire, to explain to her some of the concerns that he had, however, he was told that she was at an offsite meeting and that he could speak to her the following week. Thomas proceeded to leave work and when he was on his way home, he noticed that Claire, Ann, and two other colleagues who had left work earlier that afternoon were in a bar drinking.

When Thomas returned to work on Monday morning, he was told that he was being moved to another ward and that his primary duty was to collect and clean the bedpans of all patients. Thomas was very unhappy that his role had changed.