Trust director resigns over ‘dishonesty’

David Ainsworth, who was director of strategy and partnerships at Sherwood Forest Hospitals Foundation Trust and a registered nurse, was the subject of a fitness to practise misconduct hearing last week by the nursing regulator.

Its panel decided to suspend him from the nursing register for a year “on the grounds of public protection and public interest”. He is able to appeal within an initial interim suspension order period.

The FT confirmed to HSJ in a statement that Mr Ainsworth had “resigned” with immediate effect as a result of the panel’s decision.

It also confirmed it was aware of several referrals to the NMC regarding Mr Ainsworth’s conduct “at the point of [his] appointment”, which began in July 2022, but said that “the fit and proper persons test in place at that time was met”.

HSJ understands trust directors raised concerns about Mr Ainsworth before the final decision to appoint him.

The trust added: “David leaves with our best wishes and we thank him for all that he achieved during his time with the trust.”

The regulator reported that in Mr Ainsworth’s closing submissions to the panel, he “acknowledged and admitted the charges”, but stated he was “not a dishonest person and have been a nurse for 30 years” and “cares immensely for the NHS”.

He was previously a director and locality lead for the area’s clinical commissioning group and integrated care system.

Dishonesty over ‘several months’

The hearing, which was held in private, found Mr Ainsworth first referred himself to the NMC in January 2020 while working as a registered nurse and clinical team leader at Nottingham Emergency Medical Services – a social enterprise GP out-of-hours/urgent care provider — and also holding a role at the local CCG.

The panel learnt Mr Ainsworth had referred a CCG colleague to Sherwood Forest Hospital for a second opinion about post-surgical pain, but failed to complete any paperwork and then lied about the referral being part of an “undercover pilot” to look at referral pathways. He subsequently resigned from his roles at NEMS and the CCG.

In October 2020, another referral to the NMC was made by the NEMS director of resources while Mr Ainsworth was working as a registered nurse and clinical team leader in its out-of-hours primary care service, because of multiple incidents.

The panel heard Mr Ainsworth “missed red flags of sepsis” for a child, and sent their mother to a pharmacy rather than asking them to come in for a full review.

He also failed to make an accurate recording of this conversation and documented that the child’s rash “did fade” when their mother said the opposite. 

The panel also learnt Mr Ainsworth wrongly decided another patient’s blood results – which indicated the patient was critically unwell – were incorrect and needed repeating.

“You asked Patient B to attend for a repeat blood test when they should have been asked to go to A&E immediately,” the panel said.

It also found Mr Ainsworth’s claim at the time that he could not see all the patient’s blood results was “dishonest”.

The NMC representative Simeon Wallis argued this dishonesty “was not limited to a single occasion, it was in three different incidents over a period of several months”.

Mr Wallis also argued Mr Ainsworth’s actions were “serious and effectively an attempt to evade responsibility for situations in which a direct risk of harm to patients had been created by an error of your judgement even though no harm was materialised”.