What happened
David the nurse worked at Swallowfield Garden Care Home in Bolton, a home for people with mental health conditions. He had been a registered learning disabilities nurse since 1983 and a mental health nurse since 2005, the panel recorded.
On the night shift of 22 February 2023 he approached Resident A in the kitchen. The two appeared to speak for less than a minute. The nurse then grabbed him by the arm and pulled or dragged him across the kitchen. Resident A fell to the floor and cut his forehead.
Resident A was known to become anxious and unsettled, but very rarely physically aggressive, and he was allowed access to the kitchen and kept food in a shared fridge.
Eight days earlier he had used physical intervention on the same resident, including low or medium holds, without clinical justification and without attempting de-escalation first.
The outcome
At a substantive hearing held from 27 April to 1 May 2026 and again from 21 to 23 September 2026, the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s Fitness to Practise Committee found charges 1, 2a, 2b, 3 and 4 proved and his fitness to practise impaired.
He did not attend and was not represented. He had told the regulator that he no longer wished to practise and consented to the hearing going ahead without him. The panel made a striking-off order with an interim suspension order of 18 months.
No criminal proceedings are recorded in the determination.
What went wrong
The panel saw the CCTV and found “no observable evidence of dangerous behaviour that would justify physical intervention”. The home had systems to manage distress. The nurse had been trained in de-escalation and in restraint techniques. The force was excessive and contrary to the expected approach.
The incident form was a separate matter. In it he recorded that Resident A had shown “untoward behaviour” and then “dropped to the floor”, describing a “witnessed fall”. The panel found that the form was intended to mislead and conceal, and that the seriousness of the misconduct was compounded by the dishonesty.
What it teaches
Where restraint is used, the record is part of the act. A form that recasts a drag and a fall as a “witnessed fall” does not protect the person who writes it. It removes the injured resident from the account of their own care, and doubles the finding.
Training is not the answer to this on its own. This nurse had been taught de-escalation and restraint, and the home had the systems. What failed was the decision to take hold in a kitchen where nothing dangerous was happening, and then the decision to write it down differently.
Questions for the room
- The resident was in the kitchen with his own food. What did the situation require before anyone took hold of him?
- You have made a mistake that hurt someone. What goes in the incident form, and what happens next?
- The home had de-escalation systems and this nurse had been trained. What would have caught this sooner?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. The NMC determination and a BBC News report of the hearing were both read and agree on the CCTV finding, the injury and the dishonest form.
The determination as fetched stops inside the charge amendment, so the findings of fact rest on the press account and the record’s summary. Mr the nurse did not attend or give evidence.
This is a regulatory case, not a criminal one. No prosecution appears in the sources opened, and this page describes no conviction.
Our restraint reduction training covers de-escalation, post-incident recording and what a defensible account of an incident contains.
Sources
- Nursing and Midwifery Council, Reasons: substantive hearing, Fitness to Practise Committee, David John the nurse · 23 September 2026
- BBC News, Care home nurse dragged patient to floor, cutting his head · 2 October 2026
Reviewed 20 October 2026.