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Nurse suspended after claiming she was ‘too old’ to give CPR

Care home nurse Maria Kasmai, who showed ‘no evidence of reflection or apology’, has been suspended for 12 months after failing to attempt resuscitation
Front view of Oak Court care home in Norfolk where a nurse has been suspended after saying she was 'too old' to give cardiopulmonary resuscitation

Care home nurse Maria Kasmai, who showed ‘no evidence of reflection or apology’, has been suspended for 12 months after failing to attempt resuscitation

Front view of Oak Court care home in Norfolk where a nurse has been suspended after saying she was 'too old' to give cardiopulmonary resuscitation
Oak Court care home where nurse said she was ‘too old’ to give CPR Picture: Google Maps

A care home nurse has been suspended after she failed to carry out cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on a dying patient, saying she was ‘too old' to do CPR.

Multiple failures found during critical incident

Adult nurse Maria Kasmai has been suspended for 12 months following a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) fitness to practise hearing found she failed to respond appropriately when a patient fell gravely ill in June 2019 at Oak Court care home in Taverham.

The hearing on 17 May heard Ms Kasmai, who was the only registered nurse on duty at the time, had left a patient with an untrained healthcare assistant to call 999, failed to move the patient to the recovery position, did not check the patient’s vital signs and also failed to carry out CPR without clinical justification.

The hearing also heard she did not know how to deflate the patient’s airflow mattress to enable CPR.

One witness told the NMC panel that during the emergency at the Norfolk care home Ms Kasmai said: ‘I am 62 years of age, I cannot do CPR anymore.’

Before the hearing, which the nurse did not attend, her legal representative emailed the panel calling the allegation a ‘vicious lie based on rumours.’ But the NMC dismissed this claim.

The patient later died of a pulmonary embolism and a spinal cord infarction. An inquest into the patient’s death held in February 2020 raised concerns that the patient had not received prophylactic heparin since arriving at the rehabilitation unit and that staff ‘panicked’ and did not commence CPR when he collapsed.

Coroner says nurse’s failure to act could indicate a possible danger to future patients

The Norfolk coroner stated in a prevention of future deaths report sent to the NMC that Ms Kasmai’s response could indicate a possible danger to patients in the future.

He stated: ‘In this instance any intervention by Ms Kasmai is unlikely to have been successful, but I believe that if any other emergencies occur while she is on duty the same situation will occur and another patient may have a collapse which is reversible.’

A paramedic who attended the incident told how he was not given any handover when he arrived and the patient was ‘unresponsive to verbal stimulus and appearing blue in colour with no signs of life.’

He said that staff were surrounding the bed and trying to get a verbal response rather than carrying out any intervention. He added: ‘I would have fully expected to have seen staff trying to resuscitate him, but nothing was being done.’

Nurse shows no evidence of reflection and response deemed ‘deeply insensitive’

The panel also heard how Ms Kasmai had been given CPR training in the weeks before the incident and had not raised concerns about her abilities.

It determined: ‘As the only registered nurse on duty who was qualified and properly trained to deal with emergencies, she had an obligation to take the lead in carrying out resuscitation procedures.

‘She had a duty to remain in the room to carry out CPR and manage the incident and to provide a handover to the responding paramedic, all of which she failed to do. Furthermore, the panel noted that it had no evidence of reflection or apology from Ms Kasmai.

‘Her remark: “I am 62 years of age; I can’t do CPR anymore” was deeply insensitive.’


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