Hateful Santa wish could lead to Christmas career change
A hospital worker who tweeted ‘Dear Santa, please could you inflict some health problem on the Hunt family’ in a series of messages to the Health Secretary is facing the end of his career.
Steven Knowles called the Tory minister a ‘murderer’ in one of many tweets sent while working working at the Kings Mill Hospital in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Notts.
Knowles also retweeted “@jeremy_hunt ARE YOU SO RETARDED YOU ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN! I WILL GLADLY PUT A BULLET THROUGH YOUR HEAD”, the Health and Care Professions Council heard.
Shortly before Christmas 2014, he tweeted: ‘Staffing levels are so low that it’s effecting staff health! Some staff are doing in some cases 24 hours! I hope you really suffer Hunt!
‘Dear Santa, please could you inflict some health problem on the HUNT family, just so that they could wait MORE THAN 4H0URS ON A TROLLEY’
Knowles also directed his tweets at local newspaper the Mansfield Chad.
He wrote: ‘@chadnews You as a local paper are totally oblivious to the fact that your hospital Is (if not already )near the brink of total melt down!’
Another read: ‘Why is Kings Mill Hospital on black alert?’
Black alert is the most severe rating a trust can place itself on, and is one that reflects how busy the hospital is.
Leila Chaker, for the HCPC said: ‘The HCPC allege these are offensive and amount to misconduct.’
The tweets were written under an account called Knightrider, under the handle @nosteve1963.
Matron Sharon Baxter, who launched an invesigation on behalf of the Sherwood Forest Hospitals, NHS Foundation Trust, told the panel there were better ways to raise concerns.
She said: ‘Were they really concerns about patient safety?
‘They could have been escalated to someone senior.
‘Patients coming in need to be confident in the service.
‘They need to have confidence in the people looking after them and the environment, and that’s my concern.
‘I thought it was inappropriate.’
She also told the panel she couldn’t confirm the hospital was in black alert to the time of his tweets.
Now on the third day of the hearing, the HCPC panel have found that his actions amount to misconduct, and his fitness to practise is impaired.
HCPC panel chair Nicola Bastin said: ‘We find the facts proven.
‘We found that those facts do amount to misconduct.
‘Mr Knowles current fitness to practice is impaired. ‘
Knowles, who was present for the the first day of the hearing in central London, has missed the last two due to prior commitments.
He had admitted writing all the tweets bar the one mentioning a bullet, which he claims was a retweet.
The panel is expected to deliver a sanction later today (weds).
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