NT Nursing Awards 2015. My Nomination.

I sent this in and never even got a response. Can't think why..

My nomination goes to the unnamed nurse bullied out of her job by NT remote health management. In 2013, a remote nurse in the NT was falsely accused of stealing medications from work. She received a letter detailing the allegation and asking her to respond, from then remote health director, Tricia Wake.

The nurse's response highlighted that the alleged theft was actually medications legally prescribed to her by her GP and supplied legitimately by a pharmacy and labelled as such. No theft occurred. The allegation came about due to a spat involving the nurse and the director of nursing Lesley Brown. The spat related mainly to LB never having worked remote and not having an understanding of basic human resources policy.

It took the frequently 'working from home' Wake at remote health health several months to respond adding significantly to the stress of the nurse. But eventually the nurse was exonerated. That should have been the end of the matter, but it wasn't. Knowing that the allegations had been rejected by the organisation, and that the nurse had done nothing wrong, Brown decided to take matters into her own hands.

Consumed by her own spite, within a couple of days of the Wake decision she reported the innocent nurse to AHPRA. To portray the nurse in as bad a light as possible, Brown carefully worded her complaint creating an illusion that the nurse had stolen meds that had not been legally prescribed and supplied to her. And there was no mention of the internal investigation exonerating the nurse either. Brown knew that the allegation was completely false. She never even told the nurse that she'd done it.

The nurse then went through another six months of a very stressful AHPRA investigation before finally being exonerated by them. The whole nasty process, took the best part of a year. It caused enormous distress and when it was finally over, the nurse resigned, terrified that Brown or one of the other Darwin based managers would come after her again. After the nurse left the NT health department, she could not get a job. She found it extremely difficult to obtain references from the NT because her reputation had been damaged by such long investigatory processes. Finally, after a year of no work, she obtained a part time position inter state and is, at last, slowly putting her life back together. So this year my nomination goes to the innocent nurse who faced unrelenting bullying and false allegations invented by NT remote health managers who almost ruined her career and certainly damaged it. She faced two investigations into false allegations for the same thing, having done nothing wrong. There was no honest belief that she had committed any untoward acts and at least the second investigation was a pre meditated attempt by a remote health manager to cause the nurse as much harm as possible.