Haywood v NMC

Advised the NMC in an appeal brought in the Administrative Court by Margaret Haywood, a nurse who used covert filming of elderly patients to expose sub-standard care in a hospital in Brighton in a BBC Panorama documentary entitled Undercover Nurse.  She challenged various disciplinary findings of fact, a finding of impaired fitness to practise and a sanction of erasure from the nursing register.  The claim concerned the proper legal approach to health care workers who breach patient confidentiality in the public interest.  The appeal was settled by consent just before it was due to be heard in October 2009.