Busy nurses forced to sign false records, unionist says
The Department of Health and the police are investigating allegations by a union leader that nurses at a leading private hospital are having to sign false clinical records because they are too understaffed to complete their duties.
The hospital, St Teresa's, has rejected the allegations by Hong Kong Non-Public Organisations and Private Nursing Staff Association chairwoman Irene Leung Yuk-han as groundless and unsubstantiated.
Leung, an enrolled nurse at St Teresa's since 1977, told a televised press conference yesterday that nurses were required to sign a sheet to prove that they had made rounds every hour. But hourly rounds were impossible as the wards were 'seriously understaffed'.
She said hospital rules also required nurses to distribute drugs in pairs, not alone. This was also impossible because of the shortage but two nurses were still required to sign the medication records, forcing one to claim responsibility for something he or she did not do, she said.
A police spokesman said last night a complaint had been received from a woman on March 22 alleging she had found false staff work records at St Teresa's. Kowloon City Criminal Investigation team is working on it as a suspected forgery.
The hospital said it had already investigated the allegations in detail, and had confirmed that 'all relevant nursing procedures were performed in accordance with our guidelines and up to accepted nursing practice'.
The hospital said it would investigate Leung's conduct. It said the Department of Health had investigated Leung's complaint, and found 'no evidence to show there is a contravention of the Hospitals, Nursing Homes and Maternity Homes Registration Ordinance'.
A Department of Health spokesman said it had received the complaint last month and an investigation was still under way. The spokesman said the department made eight visits to the hospital last year, and did not discover 'any abnormalities'. He said that from June 30, 2007 to yesterday, the number of beds rose from 740 to 830, while the number of nurses increased from 476 to 607.
Leung yesterday produced copies of her complaint to the department and various letters related to it but no documentary evidence of falsified records. She said about three nurses served a ward of 37 beds on an eight-hour shift. One ward round would take 25 minutes to more than an hour. 'We simply do not have time to make rounds every hour.'
Leung said she had complained 'several times' to supervisors, but one told her 'you need to think of ways yourselves, but all grids in the charts have to be signed'. She once found that the grids for 8am to noon had already been signed by 8am.
Leung said the policy on two nurses being required to sign the medication records went into force in November 2008, after a patient died in a toilet without being discovered for hours. 'If accidents happened and the Department of Health looks into the problem, they can show them these records,' she said.
Leung said nurses in at least 10 wards, involving nearly 400 beds, were forced to do the same.
On March 21, she said, a supervisor asked her to distribute drugs alone. 'I did not want to lie so instead of asking another nurse to sign the grids, I just crossed them out,' she said. But on April 8, she received a warning letter from the hospital, saying that she distributed drugs alone without permission, in breach of the guidelines.
Private Hospitals Association chairman Alan Lau Kwok-lam said he had never heard of the problem in other private hospitals.
Additional reporting by Danny Mok
