Frances Norris death: Bracknell care home boss struck off
A director of a care company fined £1m following the death of a dementia patient who was put into a scalding bath has been struck off the nursing register.Sheth Jeebun was a director of Aster Healthcare Limited, which was fined for corporate manslaughter after Frances Norris, 93, died three days after the incident at the Birdsgrove Nursing Home in Bracknell in 2015.The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel found Mr Jeebun showed "a long-term disregard for patient safety" and that the incident was part of "a pattern of serious failings".Police investigated Mr Jeebun but he was not prosecuted after Aster Healthcare Limited admitted corporate manslaughter in 2021. The home shut in 2016.
Mrs Norris was in the bath for "several minutes" before staff realised the water was too hot.
When she was taken to hospital, it was found 12% of her body had been covered in serious burns.Mr Jeebun was the most senior person in the home responsible for health and safety, a report found. The NMC said "several official organisations" raised concerns about its thermostatic mixing valves (TMVs) "on more than one occasion".But it found Mr Jeebun set a £200 spending limit for staff that could not be exceeded without his approval.The panel found the risk of residents being scalded was "entirely foreseeable" and had been "aggravated by [his] cost-cutting at the expense of safety".
'Absence of accountability'
It said he tried replace the TMV in the bath where Mrs Norris was scalded before investigators could seize it.Mr Jeebun also told a junior colleague to fabricate records of water temperatures or face losing his job, the NMC found.In March 2020, while still under police investigation, Mr Jeebun wrote to the NMC in an effort to have his nursing registration cancelled voluntarily.The NMC said that showed his "lack of insight and absence of accountability".In 2021 home manager Elisabeth West and carer Noel Maida were given suspended prison sentences over Ms Norris's death after admitting they failed to discharge their duties correctly. Ms Norris's family previously paid tribute to her as a "warm, generous and kind-hearted" woman.
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