Stressed nurse put tape over patient’s mouth

A judge found that a male nurse who put surgical tape on a patient’s mouth was overworked and under serious stress with inadequate management support in a HSE hospital.

The judge found Bimbo Paden worked in “inequitable, unreasonable and unsafe” conditions.

Judge Kevin Kilrane was preparing to sentence Paden, aged 39, for assault on Kevin Quinn, a patient in St John’s long-term care hospital in Sligo.

However, he deferred sentence and called for a psychiatric report to establish the stress Paden, a father of three from the Philippines was under at the time of the incident on June 26 last year.

The judge told Sligo District Court a HSE internal investigation found Paden worked under serious stress which he never complained about before.

Judge Kilrane said putting surgical tape across a patient’s mouth to silence him because another patient was agitated was “completely and utterly unacceptable and an appalling act to a defenceless patient”.

He noted Bimbo was working alone in an extremely stressful environment where patients needed detailed and extensive care involving the use of wheelchairs, hoists, feeding, toileting, and preparation for ambulances.

He said it was the only professional lapse in Paden’s 12 years in the hospital.

Earlier yesterday Mr Quinn’s brother Christy, from Ballymote, Co Sligo, told the court he had studied official inquiry documents provided to him on the court’s order after a hearing last month.

The court heard statements of repeated apology from Paden. It also heard that the HSE never passed on his apologies to Mr Quinn’s family.