Wed 20 Jan 2010
Harassed NHS worker awarded £150k damages
Posted by Laura Beynon under Health and safety news
1 Comment
A former NHS worker has been awarded £150,000 in damages after suffering from a nervous breakdown which was caused by three years of harassment and bullying from her manager.
Nanette Bowen, 28, worked at the Prince Phillip Hospital in Llanelli, South Wales. In 2000, the Prince Phillip Hospital merged with Dinefwr Trusts which became Carmarthenshire NHS Trust. During the merge Bowen’s manager was replaced by Eric Lewis. Bowen was bullied and harassed by her new manager so much that she started suffering from stress and panic attacks.
Bowen claimed that Lewis made sexual innuendos towards her and made her complete a daily diary so he could monitor her work. After years of harassment Bowen was signed off sick but she felt that the Trust failed to support her and said the money would never make up for her life being ruined.
Obviously, ‘the devil is in the detail’; however, one wonders with all the H&S profile that the NHS enjoys, an individual ’suffers’ for three years of continual harrassment without either her or her colleagues (HR would have been a start …) doing something about it before it ‘ruined her life’.