October 15, 2007
Guru has to admit he has come up with some pretty far-fetched excuses in his time.
He once told his teacher that his homework had eaten his dog (he had a small shitzu and the assignment in question was to look after the school goat).
Mrs Guru still believes that he turned up late for his wedding, wearing the previous night’s clothes, because an escaped elephant ran amok in his house, soiling everything else he owned.
And whatever the traffic warden thinks, Guru didn’t actually undergo a miracle recovery just before he came back to his car parked in the disabled slot.
But despite all this, Yours Truly was gobsmacked to hear the audacious excuse offered by the Peterborough and Stamford NHS Hospitals Trust last week.
The whopper came after an immigrant nurse the trust used to employ was suspended for 12 months for shambolic performance while at Peterborough District Hospital due to poor grasp of the English language.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council heard Ronie Baucan, who came over from the Philippines to work in the Midlands hospital’s day surgery unit, admit to a string of charges relating to his "lack of competence” and poor communication skills.
Apparently Baucan gave information in a "confusing and hesitant" manner to patients about to undergo surgery, as well as walking off in the middle of conversations because he didn’t understand them.
So this begged the question – why did the trust employ someone with such poor English in the first place?
Well, a trust spokesman had a cracking excuse lined up for not spotting that the nurse had less grasp of the intracies of our mother tongue than Fawlty Towers waiter Manuel.
"The trust does have very robust recruitment procedures in place,” he said. “But there is only so much information about an individual's skills and abilities that can be established during the interview process.”
Pull the other one!
