An NHS Grampian manager told a tribunal yesterday that a former nurse caused operations to be delayed by up to 90 minutes at a time due to her “incredibly paranoid” inspections of surgical equipment for contamination.
Anne Croft, who worked as a nurse at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, claimed she was forced to resign after her concerns about blood, bone, cartilage and other contaminants, which she claimed she saw on surgical trays, went unheeded by colleagues.
She is currently in the middle of an employment tribunal against the regional health board and suing the organisation for loss of earnings.
Ms Croft also claimed she left her post because of a culture of bullying. But that interpretation was questioned yesterday when the tribunal heard from Christine Leith, a unit operations manager at the ARI.
Ms Leith told the tribunal’s chairman James Hendry that Ms Croft’s insistence on absolute contamination control resulted in important surgeries being held back.
She explained that, on one particular occasion, a patient who was in urgent need of specialist brain surgery from a neurosurgeon at ARI and who had already had two operations rescheduled almost missed out because of Ms Croft’s need to ensure cleanliness.
Ms Leith said: “It got to [the stage] where Anne was incredibly paranoid, and there was a need to get a reasonable level of scrutiny.”
She added that, on some days, Ms Croft’s inspections – where she was sometimes seen holding surgical papers up to the light to look for pinholes – led to some surgeries being delayed by periods of up to an hour and a half.
The tribunal will hear from Ms Croft’s representative – Frank LeFevre of Quantum Claims – when the tribunal resumes today.