A health visitor whose inadequate record-keeping and failure to conduct visits put vulnerable children in Fife at risk is to be banned from nursing.
Michelle Linnett did not carry out fortnightly visits to one family as agreed with social workers and her records showed no indication of contact with them for two months, nor any attempt to contact social workers thereafter.
She repeatedly failed to document plans for future contact with other families after ‘waste’ visits when she had been unable to reach them at their homes.
And Mrs Linnett, a registered nurse for almost 36 years, dishonestly filed a certificate of attendance at a paediatric life support training course which never took place.
The incidents of misconduct were among a number proved against her while employed by Fife Health Board at Bennochy Medical Practice, Kirkcaldy, between August 2008 and March 2009.
Ordering her to be struck from its register, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) said vulnerable families in Mrs Linnett’s caseload were “reliant on her practice for their safety and well-being”.
Her clinical failings, it said, breached a fundamental tenet of nursing, to work with other professionals to protect and promote the health and wellbeing of vulnerable children and families.
A report of the NMC conduct and competence committee’s hearing in Edinburgh said: “The panel was mindful that Mrs Linnett’s position as a health visitor required her to work in conjunction with many different professionals who should have been able to rely on the adequacy of the records she kept.”
It said she had sometimes failed to communicate with other professionals either directly or through her records and added: “As a result, the panel has concluded that her failures placed the safety of families, and particularly the children for whom she was responsible, at risk.”
The panel also voiced concern that the training certificate dishonestly submitted related directly to the safety of Mrs Linnett’s clinical practice.
Mrs Linnett failed to complete an updated risk assessment for one family, and when completing a two-year assessment form for a child charting developmental milestones neglected to say it was filled in the month after the observations were made.
In regards to another family for whom she showed no record of visiting for more than two months, she had documented her concerns during one visit about the mother smoking next to her child.
The panel was also told of a letter to Mrs Linnett from a social worker trying to establish where a family was living, complaining that she had not responded to attempts to contact her.
Mrs Linnett, who with a colleague was responsible for 450 children under the age of five, was absent from the hearing. However, she had indicated during a management investigation that she had concerns about her health and her workload.
An interim suspension order has been imposed and will be replaced by the striking-off order if no appeal is lodged within 28 days.
The Courier was unable to contact Mrs Linnett.