A KIDNEY patient went into cardiac arrest when a blundering nurse accidentally cut his dialysis tube while trying to remove a dressing.

Patricia Yeribu, a nurse at Basildon Hospital, used scissors to remove the dressing despite being warned not to by the patient's concerned wife.

She has been banned from practising for 12 months after a Nursing and Midwifery Council panel deemed her actions"shocking to the general public."

Mrs Yeribu had been treating a 58-year-old kidney patient, who was a regular outpatient on the hospital's renal unit.

He had been fitted with a Tesio line, which is inserted near the heart to enable blood to pass between the patient's body and a dialysis machine.

When he began to feel unwell and started bleeding from the tube, his wife called for an ambulance and he was taken to A&E.

Mrs Yeribu was asked by a doctor to remove the dressing around the tube's entry point, and in the process accidentally cutting the Tesio line with a pair of scissors.

It caused the man to lose a "considerable amount of blood" and go into cardiac arrest.

The panel also found that Mrs Yeribu, who was "frozen by shock", did not immediately call for assistance, press the emergency bell, or attempt to stop the bleeding.

In a report to Mrs Yeribu, a panel spokesman said: "There was a clear risk of death to the patient arising from your actions.

"Your actions in using scissors on a Tesio line were serious and it was clear that by using scissors there was the potential to cut the line.

"Your actions brought the nursing profession into serious disrepute. They would be deplored by nursing and other professionals and be found shocking to the general public.

"You were in breach of the fundamental tenets of the nursing profession in failing to provide a high standard of care to your patient.”

A Basildon Hospital spokesman said Mrs Yeribu, an agency nurse, has not worked at the trust since the incident, in June 2014.

She added: "Mrs Yeribu was excluded from undertaking shifts within the trust.

"There is an expectation that any registered nurse is competent to apply basic nursing care and request help when something is beyond their scope of knowledge and skill.

"To ensure that learning occurs as a result of this incident and to minimise the risk of repetition, a serious incident investigation was carried out."