The nurse would leave the drugs in the patient’ s letterbox.

ANTONY SCHOLEFIELD A NURSE who was delegated by a GP to manage a patient’ s zolpidem has been censured after leaving the drugs in a letterbox or a bag outside the patient’ s apartment.

Sydney nurse David Cain was working under the Mental Health Nurse Incentive Plan, which allows practices to hire nurses on payments of up to $ 240 a session.

As part of the arrangement

, the patient’ s GP would prescribe 10mg zolpidem, and Mr Cain would store the drugs and dispense them to the patient when necessary.

The patient had a history of zolpidem misuse, borderline personality disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder and depression. However, on at least 60 occasions, Mr Cain dispensed the drug without actually seeing the patient.

The NSW Civil and

Administrative Tribunal heard that he would leave the drugs in various insecure locations, such as a letterbox or a bag outside the patient’ s apartment.

“ Self-evidently, by failing to consult face-to-face, Mr Cain was unable to properly assess [ the patient’ s ] mental state,” the tribunal said.

The nurse also failed to keep the GP updated regularly, even when the patient

took a whole box of zolpidem in one day.

In 2011, the patient died of multidrug toxicity, aged 35.

The GP, whose identity has been suppressed, told the tribunal Mr Cain was supposed to limit the patient to one tablet every 24 hours, four a week and 14 a month.

The NSW Health Care Complaints Commission alleged that he ignored the GP’ s instructions and

handed over an average of six tablets a week.

“ In essence, the commission alleges that Mr Cain was on a frolic of his own and was providing Stilnox in an unauthorised fashion,” the tribunal said.

But the tribunal dismissed this part of the complaint.

It found Mr Cain guilty of professional misconduct, but has not yet decided on a penalty.

from page 1 in a relatively short time also demonstrates that such a service in the interests of consumers is not brain surgery,” said CEO Leanne Wells.

“ When we consider all that surgeons and other specialists achieve these days, their failure to provide a simple platform for consumers to view and compare surgeons’ fees— particularly at a time of often very high costs— does them no credit.”

Dr Zhu said more than 1000 doctors and patients had signed up to SeekMedi as a result of publicity in Australia Doctor, with dozens of specialists also saying they wanted their details and their fees listed.

He stressed the website was free to use and he did not plan to make money from the venture, although he has received donations from fellow doctors to cover his costs.

See: www. seekmedi. com

from page 1 for Immunisation Research

and Surveillance in Sydney, stressed that despite type b disease being rare, unimmunised or incompletely immunised children were still at risk.“ It is consigned to the history books, but this is more relevant to hospital practice than general practice, where it was always rare. Although GPs do need to distinguish between epiglottitis and croup,” he said.

However, the study had allayed concerns that Hib vaccination would cause a serotype shift and increase in serious infections other non-B strains of H. influenzae, he said.“ There’ s no evidence of‘ serotype replacement’ with other types filling a niche left by type b disappearing,” Professor McIntyre said. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health 2017; online.