A COURAGEOUS nurse and care assistant have been praised for blowing the whistle on a nursing home owner who left patients covered in diarrhoea and porridge and ordered staff not to clean them.

Margaret Thresa Saunders, joint proprietor and registered nurse at the former Hollins Nursing Home, Red Lees Road, Cliviger, has been banned from working in the profession after she was found guilty of three charges of professional misconduct.

Mrs Saunders, who lives in Burnley, ran the home with her husband Carey.

She was arrested on July 3, 1997, when nurse Lynn Hancock called in local authority inspectors after care assistant Claire Dunderdale told her she was ordered not to give fluids to a 72-year-old resident suffering from Parkinson's Disease and a curvature of the spine.

At the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting hearing, Miss Dunderdale said: "We'd been told not to give her any fluids. "We got her out of bed and I had made her a drink. Mrs Saunders came in and saw that we had given her a drink and started being very nasty towards me. She said we had been told we weren't to give her any fluids.

"Mrs Saunders said the resident was always spilling drinks and attention seeking which is why she wasn't allowed any drinks at all. "The resident was very withdrawn as Mrs Saunders had undressed her for bed very roughly."

Miss Dunderdale informed Miss Hancock of what had happened and she in turn informed the East Lancashire Health Authority.

The next day Miss Dunderdale took some porridge to the resident and she told the tribunal: "As the resident took the porridge off the table she tipped it over and it went over her legs. I went to try to clean it up but Mrs Saunders came in and said she was attention seeking and to leave her like she was."

Miss Dunderdale told the hearing about a further incident when she started to clean a resident who was covered in diarrhoea and Mrs Saunders said it was attention seeking and she should not clean her.

Today, the chairman of Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Community Health Council, Coun Frank Clifford, said: "It must have taken a great deal of courage for them to say what was happening.

"If what this case does is give more encouragement to other people not to, as it were, walk on by, but to open up and say exactly what is happening, it will serve the patients and their carers and families. "People in these homes often don't have a voice and are among the most vulnerable in our community. If someone knows of treatment which is not right or suspects something is wrong they should tell. These people deserve the quality of care and support they have a right to expect."

Senior nurse adviser to the East Lancashire Health Authority, Val Carman, said: "We took legal advice and then sought action as the regulator for the register of homes to issue a notice to close.

"The home closed soon after that and as I understand it is is now a private house. We are satisfied with the action that has been taken."

Mrs Saunders' name has been removed from the national register which means she is no longer able to call herself, or work as, a registered nurse.

Mandie Lavin, the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting's director of professional conduct said: "These offences constitute abuse through neglect of elderly and vulnerable patients.

"We will take firm action to protect the public from those, like Mrs Saunders, who fail to meet the standards of professional conduct."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.