Nurse struck off for starting intimate relationship with patient’s carer

By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter

A nurse who moved into a ‘vulnerable’ patient’s house after she started dating his carer has been struck off.

Louise Lungowe Rebekah John, a former Lewisham Hospital nurse, told a misconduct panel that she had done nothing wrong by beginning the relationship with the patient’s relative in 2019.

Ms John accused the panel’s chairman of interrupting her and demanded he be replaced during the week-long Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) hearing in April.

But John ended up getting kicked out of the meeting herself after she ignored warnings about her ‘unacceptable behaviour’, which peaked in her telling the panel: ‘I don’t wanna see that b****’s face’ in reference to an unnamed individual present.

John cared for the unidentified patient, known only as Patient A, on Lewisham Hospital’s Alder Ward while working at the hospital between 2018 and 2020. She met his relative, referred to only as Person A, in 2019 through church. By November of the same year they were dating.

John admitted she moved into Patient A’s house with his family member soon after. She told the hearing that she did so to help clean the property, which she described as ‘squalid’, and to make it suitable for Patient A upon his discharge from hospital.

John got engaged to Person A in February 2020 and the pair have since married. Patient A died in May 2020. John resigned from Lewisham Hospital in June 2020.

An NMC panel ruled that John had committed misconduct by entering into an intimate relationship with Patient A’s relative and moving into his home to live with his carer. The panel said that her fitness to practise as a nurse was impaired as a result of these actions and decided to ban her from working as a nurse.

The panel said that John had ‘not demonstrated any insight into her behaviour.’ Her insistence that the relationship with Person A should be treated like a relationship between colleagues failed ‘to appreciate the inherent vulnerability of patients’, the panel added.

It continued: “Having regard to the effect of Ms John’s actions in bringing the profession into disrepute and the fact that they fell seriously short of the high standards expected of a registered nurse, the panel has concluded that nothing short of a striking-off order would be sufficient in this case.”

John was cleared of misconduct for two other charges relating to a Court of Protection hearing she attended in February 2020 concerning Patient A’s welfare. The panel said she attended the hearing in a non-professional capacity and as such she committed no wrongdoing.

Pictured top: Lewisham Hospital (Picture: Google Street View)