Patient dies after nurse switches off loud heart alarm while she FaceTimes her family
An 85-year-old patient died after a nurse switched off his heart monitor while on FaceTime to her family.
Geraldine Lumbo Dizon, a nurse at the Nepean Private Hospital in Kingswood, Sydney, received the call from her relatives during her night shift on 29 July.
The nurse turned off the patient's alarm while chatting with her family back in the Philippines on a '66-minute' FaceTime call.
She also failed to inform doctors about the patient's irregular heart rhythm an hour before he died, the New South Wales Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal has found.
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Dizon has since had her registration revoked.
The elderly man was admitted to the Nepean Private Hospital on 16 July, 2021, with renal and heart failure.
Dizon was required to monitor the man's observations at six-hourly intervals, however, CCTV footage found she only checked it once during her 10-hour shift.
Following the man's passing, Dizon's registration was suspended for at least 12 months, and she was also found guilty of professional misconduct and unsatisfactory professional conduct.
The New South Wales Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal also ruled: "At 7:07 am 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."
It was found that the patient's heartbeat began to slow down 15 minutes before she jumped on the video call.
It only took seven minutes from when the mute alert was detected to the elderly man suffering cardiac failure. His body was found unresponsive in his bed 10 minutes later.
At one of her tribunal hearings, Dizon explained that 'she turned the speaker off' to stop confusing another patient from thinking it was his doorbell and getting out of his bed.
She then allegedly forgot to connect the alarm off at the end of her shift.
The tribunal also received evidence which showed Dizon on her phone for 'more than 66 minutes on FaceTime and other items', during her night shift which went against hospital policy.
Dizon did not tell her colleagues about an irregular electrocardiogram (ECG) test because she wasn't 'good at ECG reading'.
The nurse breached the Australian nurse safety protocols by working 70 hours a week between January and July 2021.
She trained at Central Luzon Doctors Hospital in the Philippines in 1997 and was registered as a nurse in Australia since 2006.
Rashi Agarwal