A FORMER Gloucestershire paramedic has been suspended after repeated failings which involved the potential for serious harm to vulnerable patients.

A Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service panel has decided to suspend the registration of Jayne M Denton for a further 12 months.

Mrs Denton, who is a registered paramedic, was working as a self-employed Emergency Care Practitioner (ECP) for Care UK Ltd which now trades as Practice Plus Group.

At the time of the events, her role at ECP involved participation in the out of hours service during periods in the evening, overnight, at weekends and on bank holidays when GP services are not available.

In February 2020, she moved from Gloucestershire out of hours service to the Worcestershire out of hours service. And ceased to work for Care UK in April 2020.

As a self-employed ECP, the registrant was not subject to line management, but the quality of her work was overseen and monitored by the lead nurse at Care UK/Practice Plus Group.

On April 30, 2020, the HCPC received a referral from Care UK. A routine audit of the registrant’s work for March 2020 was undertaken. This routine audit involved a review of a randomly selected single case.

There were concerns arising from this single case, and therefore an enhanced audit was undertaken of five further randomly selected cases.

In all five cases, further concerns were highlighted in the audit and none of the cases were assessed as meeting a satisfactory standard.

The concerns related to a poor standard of history taking and lack of attention to and awareness of “red flag” symptoms.

The registrant’s examination skills or her completion of documentation reflected a lack of ability to confirm or exclude red flag symptoms and then to act upon them. The audit also found consistent and concerning prescribing errors.

Mrs Denton, who did not attend the online hearing on January 6 said she had taken early retirement after her suspension on January 13, 2022.

“I now have my NHS pension that I have taken early so in effect I’ve now retired. I work part time in retail now. I decided this was the best course of action,” she said in an email to the panel.

“I felt that my mental health preceding the hearing as well as the information regarding the allegations were not taken into account.

“As, when I subsequently read the suspension summary it states I didn’t interact. When I did and had glowing character references from a range of health care professionals. In hindsight I would have taken legal representation.

“But as I was not suspended at the interim hearing, which I was surprised at considering the 12/18 months suspension in January this year. May I take this opportunity to enquire if l may be either retired or voluntary removed from the HCPC register please…”

The panel proceeded in the absence of Mrs Denton and decided to suspend her for another year.

They said there was a risk that patients might be prescribed medication which was harmful, and a risk that Mrs Denton would fail to identify a potentially serious condition such as pulmonary embolism, which can be fatal if it is not treated immediately.

The panel determined that Mrs Denton has not shown evidence of remediation or a sufficient level of insight, nor has she engaged in continuing professional development and/or relevant training.

They concluded there is a high risk of repetition of similar concerns if Mrs Denton were to continue practice.

The registrant’s lack of competence involves the risk of serious harm to patients, the panel said.

The panel noted that there is therefore an ongoing risk of harm to vulnerable service users and the panel concluded a finding of impairment is required to protect the public against the risk of repetition.