After details of the draft charges emerged in August, an NMC spokesman said: “Since the NMC’s case examiners considered the allegations and drafted charges, we have received further evidence”. Another charge of dishonesty was withdrawn.
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She added: “Public Health England were unprepared for the volume of people returning from countries affected by Ebola”.
The panel’s Chairman Timothy Cole said that “compelling and clear medical evidence” about Cafferkey’s state of mind at the time of her return to the United Kingdom had been central to the decision.
LONDON (AP) – A British nurse who contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone has been cleared of misconduct charges.
She returned to London and then travelled on to Scotland before being diagnosed, and spent nearly a month being treated in an isolation unit at London’s Royal Free Hospital.
She came close to death on two separate occasions as the virus lingered in her system and developed meningitis in September 2015.
However in the months that followed, her health suffered as she had issues with her thyroid, her hair fell out and she had headaches and pains in her joints.
Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey “potentially put the public at risk” through her actions as she returned to the United Kingdom with the virus, a misconduct hearing has been told.
A Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel cleared the 40-year-old of three charges, ruling there was “no evidence” she had tried to mislead health authorities.
She was also accused of failing to flag up her true temperature to medical staff at a screening area in the airport.
The decision to clear Ms Cafferkey was based on an agreed narrative of facts which had been presented to the panel on Tuesday.
She told the panel that, in going to Sierra Leone, Ms Cafferkey, from Cambuslang near Glasgow, had strengthened the reputation of the profession.
They showed that the nurse’s temperature was recorded twice by a doctor, in the presence of another person referred to as “registrant A, at more than 38C”.
It was claimed she had not acted to correct an inaccurate temperature recording on a form which she had not filled out after arriving at the end of a 22-hour journey, already suffering from Ebola.
Speaking outside the hearing, Ms Cafferkey’s lawyer said she was “relieved the process is at an end” and stressed the nurse would have never knowingly placed anyone in danger.
It found Ms Cafferkey’s actions did not amount to misconduct after the fitness to practice hearing.
When a temperature was recorded above the 37.5C threshold the patient was expected to be taken for further care.
Ms Cafferkey admitted taking paracetamol at some point but did not mention it to a doctor when she returned to the screening areas.
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She made it through the checks and was passed fit to board a connecting flight back to Scotland.
