Clare Price

Regulatory & disciplinary

Clare has regularly appeared before the Nursing and Midwifery Council for a considerable number of years and, more recently, before the First-Tier Tribunal (Health, Education and Social Care). She represents nurses at both interim suspension hearings and full hearings before the Conduct and Competence Committee, often at lengthy hearings which have lasted for up to 2 weeks, and where her advocacy skills are of particular importance.

Examples of cases in which she has recently been instructed involve issues of fitness to practise arising out of allegations of drug errors, sleeping whilst on duty and failing adequately to care for patients.  Her instructions are usually in the more challenging and complex cases described in Chambers 2012 as being of "Gordian complexity".

Examples of cases in which she has recently been instructed include:-

  • The successful defence of a nurse who was alleged to have failed to respond to the deteriorating condition of a patient who died within a short time of admission to a medical assessment unit.
  • The successful defence of a nurse in a case involving 30+ serious allegations of dishonest whilst she was managing a residential home caring for vulnerable adults.
  • The successful defence of a manager of a nursing home who was alleged to have failed to provide adequate care in many respects for a patient with a pressure sore.

Recent reported decisions are:-

  • SK v Secretary of State [2011] UKFTT 547 (HESC)
  • MAC v Secretary of State for Health [2009] 469.PVA [2009] 470.PC
  • Carranza v another v Secretaries of State for Health and Children, Schools and Families [2008] 1221.PVA
  • JM v Secretary of State [2007] 920.PC [2007] 921.PVA

Clare also represented the Bar Standards Board on a pro bono basis on an appeal by a student against a decision to expel him from Lincoln's Inn for dishonesty in copying a model answer in a Bar Vocational Course examination and subsequent denials of the allegation. She drafted a lengthy response to the Appeal on behalf of the Bar Standards Board and then successfully represented the BSB at the appeal hearing before Newey J in July 2011.