30 April 2023 , 13:18
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An 85-year-old patient died after his nurse disconnected his heart monitor to FaceTime her family.
Geraldine Lumbo Dizon was working the night shift at Nepean Private Hospital in Kingswood, Sydney on July 29, when she received a call from her relatives and switched off the sound to the monitor.
A New South Wales Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal also found that she failed to warn doctors of the patient's irregular heart rhythm moments before the incident.
At the hearing, the nurse was found guilty of professional misconduct and unsatisfactory professional conduct.
She was found guilty of unprofessional conduct at an employment tribunal (Google)Dizon was also found to have failed to provide treatment for the male patient, who had renal and heart failure, while she was on the call.
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After her shift, medics were left stumped by his failing health because she'd failed to plug the monitor back in.
In its concluding decision, the tribunal ruled: “At 7:07am on 30 July 2021, the heart monitor showed Patient A was bradycardia [slow heartbeat].
“Nursing and medical staff could not hear the alarm because the telemetry alarm speakers were still disconnected.”
Dizon had argued that she had turned the sound off because it was confusing other patients. She said they were mistaking it for the ring of a doorbell.
It took just seven minutes between when the mute alert was detected for the OAP to suffer a cardiac failure. He was discovered dead in his bed around 10 minutes later.
She was also supposed to regularly check on her patients, but CCTV revealed she only did so once during a 10-hour shift.
It was also found that she was speaking with her family 15 minutes before his heart began to slow, and that in total she was on the phone for 66 minutes.
She claimed she was checking on her family in the Philippines, and said she didn't notify other staff because she wasn't "good at ECG reading".