Nurse shocked staff with sick pranks and jibes

Christine Mitchelson, 53, is said to have shocked staff with her sick pranks and racist jibes while on duty at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary.

The grandmother also slammed an elderly man onto a bed and pushed another into a chair during her reign of terror on ward 48 between 2001 and 2004, the Nursing and Midwifery Council has heard.

Married Mitchelson, of Denton Burn, Newcastle, also faces claims that she invented patients' vital observation records - and put lives at risks.

Senior sister Pauline Stanton has told the three day hearing how Mitchelson spiked her cola with a patient's glass eye.

She said: "Christine offered me a plastic beaker of cola and said 'Come on happy time, I've poured you a glass of Coke.

"I took the beaker and was about to have a drink when I saw this thing floating in it. Initially I thought it was a cheese Quaver crisp.

"I said 'What's that?', and pulled it out with my finger. It flipped over and there was this glass eye staring at me.

"I said 'Urgh! It's an eye', and gave a nervous laugh. I was shocked, but did not find it funny.

"I could not believe what I was seeing. Everyone else was laughing. I don't know if anyone would have said anything, or let me take a swig from the glass if I had not noticed the eye."

Mrs Stanton added: "I did not report it to the manager because I thought it was a one-off practical joke against me - Christine found it hilarious."

In a letter penned to the NMC, Mitchelson admitted the prank, claiming she had the patient's permission to use the glass eye.

"'All of the six patients on the ward were laughing," she said.

"They said I was a tonic to them. I rinsed the eye then put it in Pauline's Pepsi Max. It did not float, it looked like a potato chip."

"When I stopped her from drinking and told her it was an eye she laughed hysterically then went to chastise the patient who had given me the eye. I regretted it afterwards as it was not professional."

Staff nurse Marie Kaplanis told the hearing how Mitchelson drew a smiley face on a man's umbilical hernia described as the size of an orange.

At the time the patient, referred to as E, had been isolated after being diagnosed with MRSA.

She said: "Mitchelson was inside the cubicle along with a support worker and his family and I heard a loud laugh.

"I was curious and stepped in to try and find out what was happening.

"I saw the patient's abdomen was exposed - he had a huge umbilical hernia, the size of an orange fruit.

"I saw a smiley face on the umbilical hernia.

"I asked who had done it and the registrant (Mitchelson) said I have. I just shook my head in disbelief."

Ms Kaplanis said she later asked Mitchelson why she had done it and she replied: 'Just for a laugh'.

Another time Mrs Kaplanis said the nurse made a racist remark about Filipino nurses: "She was looking at my hands and said how come the other Filipino nurses have got hands of nig nogs unlike yours.

"She was holding my hands and trying to inspect them.

"I didn't know what nig nog meant and I asked her what it meant and she burst out laughing.

"It was in a jokey manner, so I didn't know if she had malicious intent."

Mrs Kaplanis said on another occasion a patient was suffering breathing problems and needed more oxygen.

She said Mitchelson replied: "I don't think she needs a nebuliser, she's just panicking.

"Last night I gave the b****r a saline nebuliser instead of salbutamol nebuliser and she didn't know the difference".

Mrs Kaplanis added: "I was shocked."

Health care assistant Denise Lake told the hearing how Mitchelson would use a 'magic pen' to save time.

Mrs Lake told the panel: "Instead of taking patient's blood pressure, SATS, temperature, she just filled the chart in without actually taking them.

"She used to say she used the magic pen. She thought it was quite funny actually. She used to laugh about it.

"She would say 'Oh I just use the magic pen. It saved time'."

Mrs Lake said Mitchelson also told other care assistants to use the same practise.

"I didn't say anything. I knew it was wrong - it put people's lives at risk."

Mrs Lake said the mother of three was also offensive about Filipino nurses: "She called them 'black bastards, go back to where you're from', and called them wogs."

"She said it about them never to their face. She said it every day."

She also saw Mitchelson drag an elderly dementia patient, who was in her 80s and weighed only six stone, from her bed before plonking her bank in a chair and leaving her.

Asked why she did not report the incident, Mrs Lake said: "I was frightened of Christine because she's a nasty person."

Gilda Salin, who now works at Newcastle General Hospital, told the panel of an incident in 2003 where Mitchelson grabbed the back of an elderly man's pyjamas and slammed him into a chair.

"I was shocked with what she did. The patient was shocked also. He was surprised by the way he had been handled.

"I was expecting we would put him down in the chair slowly."

Asked why she did not report the incident, Mrs Salin said: "I was scared. She was more senior than I am, I was new on the ward."

Mitchelson started work at the hospital in 1999 and handed in her resignation after in May 2004 after she was reported to her bosses.

A panel of the NMC is currently considering 12 charges relating to the rough and degrading treatment of patients, failing to record patients' vital observations correctly and ordering other staff to do the same, making racist remarks about work colleagues, incorrect administration of drugs to patients and inappropriate behaviour.

If found guilty of misconduct Mitchelson, who is not attending the hearing due to ill health, could be struck off.