AN UNDERCOVER nurse from Liverpool carried out secret filming because it was the “only option” to reveal the neglect of elderly patients on a hospital ward, a disciplinary hearing was told yesterday.
Margaret Haywood, 58, filmed at the Royal Sussex Hospital, in Brighton, for a BBC Panorama programme screened in July, 2005.
The producer of the Undercover Nurse programme, Elizabeth Bloor, told the Nursing Midwifery Council Fitness to Practise Panel that “there was an over-arching public interest” in the broadcast.
Ms Bloor told the hearing, held in London, that seeking permission and filming openly on a hospital ward would not have uncovered the true conditions.
She said: “We needed to see what was really happening so we felt our only option really was to ask somebody to go undercover on a ward, and that person really should be a nurse. ”
She added: “Given that most of the complaints we had were to do with medical care, we thought that would be an appropriate route.”
Ms Haywood, who has been a nurse for more than 20 years, had previously helped the BBC in an advisory role with a film about carers in 2003. Ms Bloor said she felt urged to make the hospital’s documentary because Panorama had received 4,000 to 5,000 complaints about conditions.
