A nurse who took a €100 loan from a disabled patient in Letterkenny has been found guilty of professional misconduct.
Mary Grace Dela Cruz Alegarme from the Philippines admitted to taking €100 as a loan from a resident of the Cheshire Ireland Home in Letterkenny.
Ms Alegarme was found guilty of three counts of professional misconduct and breaches of the Code of Professional Conduct for Nurses following yesterday’s inquiry with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland in Dublin.
The events in question occurred in March and April 2013, when it emerged that a patient had given the loan to Ms Alegarme, who had said the money was to be sent home to her ill mother in the Philippines.
The resident, Patient A, is a man in his 50s with progressive multiple sclerosis and is wholly dependent on others.
The patient alerted his HSE key worker to the loan. He was told that Ms Alegarme had a joint account with her husband but did not want him to know about the loan.
Ms Alegarme lost her job as a result of the incident and a complaint was made by Cheshire Ireland to the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland.
Ms Alegarme’s representative said she admitted the allegations are professional misconduct and poor professional performance. Ms Alegarme said she did not directly ask the patient for the money.
She qualified as a nurse in 1999 and was working part-time at the Cheshire Ireland centre since 2008.
The inquiry in Dublin yesterday heard that Ms Alegarme was a competent nurse who was held in high regard in her profession. Her representative from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said she had significant remorse over the alleged incident. She knew it was a serious error but maintained it was a one-off mistake.
The inquiry did not uphold the finding of poor professional performance.
Ms Alegarme currently works in the oncology unit of Letterkenny University Hospital.
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