I work in a Nursing Home for the elderly (in England) and have been there for about 14 months and doing this line of work for about 10 years now. I currently work nights.
On the 14th of October 2008 I witnessed a nurse attack an elderly lady, force medication down her throat then threaten to hit her if she spat it out. I spoke about the incident to another nurse on duty who laughed about it and I told another woman (who is not a trained nurse), who confronted her and said it was unacceptable.
After my shift I left, took my son to school and when I came home I had 3 missed calls on my phone. I rang the number back and it was the scarey nurse (illegally taken my number out of a file and gone home with it) shouting at me because she thought I was going to report her, she went on to tell me that she hadn't attacked anyone and had done nothing wrong, which is crap, I was there.
That morning I went back to work, told my manager the whole story and after lots of investigations this nurse was suspenede and then sacked.
Now I've had a letter from a solicitor representing the NMC (Nursing and Midwifery Council) asking me to make another statement and come to a court hearing. Because no one else witnessed the attack it's all down to me. Which would be fine, except;
a) the nurse who was sacked is Nigerian, which caused a massive racial debate and i was accused of being racist (which I'm not) and has made other non-english workers really wary of me,
b) the nurse who was sacked still has friends where I work, one of which assaulted me (she is also Nigerian and I felt I couldn't report it because of the racism thing)
c) the Assisstant manager recently said to one of my friends at work that "Tanya [that's me] managed to find a way of getting a good nurse sacked and you should only report people if you are better than them."
She's now looking for a way to get me sacked, apparantly.
d) I've had absolutely no support from my work with all of this.
Do I give evidence?? I know I'm already involved but I'm worried about my job and I really don't want any sh:t at work. What do I do??
For the record; i'm obligated by law to report abuse. If I hadn't reported it and the management found out I would have been in serious trouble.