Nottingham nurse struck off over cannabis oil cancer patient row

A nurse who tried to convince a cancer patient to buy cannabis oil so she could profit has been struck off.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) said Eliska Neuzilova had treated the patient while working at the Queen's Medical Centre (QMC) in Nottingham in June 2018.

She "failed to maintain professional boundaries" and gave "unsolicited medical advice", the body said.

A fitness to practise committee found she had committed misconduct.

Ms Neuzilova, who did not attend the hearing, had been working as an agency nurse at the QMC's neuro-spinal post-operative unit at the time she met the patient, who has since died.

At the same time, she "was involved with a company that sold cannabis oil".

The patient's family contacted Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS trust, claiming the nurse "tried to convince [the patient] A to stop eating sugar and to take cannabis oil to cure her cancer".

She also posted a leaflet about the benefits of cannabis oil through the patient's letterbox, which the panel found "amounted to a misuse of patient information".

Ms Neuzilova said she had not sought financial gain through promoting cannabis oil, but the panel "found it implausible [she] would go out of her way to deliver a leaflet to [the patient] which advertised products her company sold for purely altruistic reasons".

Finding her actions amounted to misconduct, the panel said: "A health care professional giving advice on supplements or treatments that are not supported by medical evidence is inappropriate and potentially dangerous."

The panel also found Ms Neuzilova filled in documents retrospectively regarding giving a patient medication and failed to record information on a fluid chart that was also altered afterwards.

Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].