Rossitsa Petkova nursing misconduct struck off after a Nursing and Midwifery Council panel found eight allegations proven, including a remark about a resident with dementia and a birthday cake at Castleford House Nursing Home in Tutshill, Gloucestershire. The panel banned her from the profession after hearing allegations about conduct between January and October 2023.
Melanie Corfield and the cake
Melanie Corfield, a kitchen assistant at the care home, told the panel she asked what to do with the cake while the resident was in bed. She said: “He [the resident] was in bed, so I asked Rossi what she would like me to do with the cake”.
Corfield said Petkova replied: “She told me that I have to remember he doesn't have capacity, that he wouldn't even know it was his birthday and to pretty much not make a big thing of it.” Corfield added: “It's not the fact that he hasn't got capacity, this is his birthday. And to me, everybody deserves a birthday, dementia or not, so we will get one of the girls to take it up”. She also said Petkova added: “Or if not, we can eat the cake”.
Castleford House Nursing Home in Tutshill
The Nursing and Midwifery Council panel said Petkova had worked as a registered nurse at Castleford House Nursing Home for more than a decade. It said the residents involved were elderly and vulnerable, and it found the allegations proved after Petkova denied several of them.
Among the other proven allegations, the panel said she shouted at residents to “shut up” and told one resident that if they did not eat their dinner, their daughter would not be able to visit them. Petkova denied making the comments and described colleagues’ complaints as “pointless and childish complaints”.
Nursing and Midwifery Council panel
The panel said Petkova’s actions were “significant departures from the standards expected of a registered nurse” and were “fundamentally incompatible with her remaining on the register.” That ruling ended her ability to practise as a registered nurse and closed the case on the conduct the panel examined.
The open issue from the record is what the remaining proven allegations were beyond the birthday cake comment, the shouting and the dinner-and-visit threat. The panel has already drawn its line: eight proven allegations, a struck-off nurse, and a finding that the conduct could not sit alongside continued registration.
