Gwynedd nurse told colleague her breasts were a ‘good size’

Antony Mann, a mental health nurse on the Taliesin Ward at Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor since 2013, was sacked by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board in January 2022.

He was then removed from the register of nurses following a Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) Fitness to Practise Committee hearing earlier this month.

Mr Mann was absent from and unrepresented at the hearing, having previously emailed the NMC: “just take me off the register” and “I’m not in the slightest interested. Stop sending this b*******. Strike me off and f*** off”.

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In his absence, the hearing was told that, in September 2019, Mr Mann made several sexually suggestive comments to a student nurse working on the same ward as him.

This included him asking her if she had any piercing in places that he could not see under her uniform, staring at her breasts and asking if they were real or cosmetically enhanced, and suggesting that they were a “good size”.

At the time of the incident, the student nurse was required to observe a patient, and so to leave her station would have been a dereliction of duty.

She told the hearing that she was sat down during this incident at the closed end of a corridor, and that Mr Mann was standing over her, leaving her feeling “trapped”.

Mr Mann had admitted in 2021 making comments about her breasts and piercings, but said they were “not intended to be inappropriate”.

He added that comments similar to these were often made on the ward, and that the majority of staff took part in this type of conversation.

Despite this, an investigating officer for the health board found “no evidence in the information I had received that ‘inappropriate banter’ was a culture on Taliesin Ward.”

In October 2019, Mr Mann told the same student nurse that he was attracted to a previous patient on the ward, but said he could not be in a relationship with an individual with a diagnosed mental health condition.

The student nurse told the hearing that Mr Mann had said the patient was “young, blonde, had a good body and was attractive”.

She said she was “shocked” by his comments, which also included him saying that a woman with a mental health diagnosis would be “too difficult to live with”.

Similarly, the student nurse said Mr Mann had “mentioned that females who suffer with bipolar can be sexually disinhibited when they become ill”.

Mr Mann admitted to having said that he did “fancy” the patient, but said it was meant as a “flippant, one-off comment” with no offence intended.

On a night shift in early November 2019, Mr Mann was the nurse in charge on the ward and the only nurse on shift when a patient had an unwitnessed fall and was later found on the floor.

But Mr Mann did not carry out any observations, nor did he request the on-call doctor to attend or any complete any of the relevant documents for a patient who suffered an unwitnessed fall.

He also did not make an entry in the patient’s records of the fall, and did not provide an accurate or adequate account of the event in his “handover” of the shift to the ward manager.

Mr Mann had attempted to mitigate his behaviour by saying that the ward was understaffed at the time.

Concluding, the panel found that Mr Mann “negatively impacted the wellbeing” of the student nurse, and that the patient who fell “was caused physical harm as a result of Mr Mann’s misconduct”.

He had “breached the fundamental tenets of the nursing profession and therefore brought its reputation into disrepute,” the panel added.

Mr Mann was also deemed to have not demonstrated any understanding of, nor remorse for, his wrongdoing.

An interim suspension order of 18 months will be served by Mr Mann prior to his striking-off order taking effect.