A LAZY care home nurse has been booted out of the profession for watching the World Cup while he should have been looking after patients.

Peter Helps even turned off the home’s alarm system so he could concentrate on the televised football, allowing a vulnerable dementia patient to wander out into the street.

The confused man was later found next to a busy road, a Nursing and Midwifery Coun-cil disciplinary hearing in London heard this week.

Helps, 44, off Fielding Lane, Oswaldtwistle, spent most of the weekend of 17 and 18 June 2006 with his feet up at the Mapleford Nursing Home, Huncoat, enjoying the cup finals in Germany, even though he was the senior nurse in charge.

The nurse, who did not attend the hearing, was found guilty of spending long periods of his shift sitting in the lounge watching TV with his feet up, silencing the call buzzer system which resulted in Resident A leaving the building, withholding cigarettes from residents for no apparent reason and speaking inappropriately to Resident A.

Care assistant Miriam Gudgeon said: "Throughout the weekend he was watching TV most of the time in the bar lounge."

The other nurse on duty and several other carers complained about Helps.

The home had a policy of handing out cigarettes every hour to residents who smoked, but Helps repeatedly refused to give one to Resident A.

He told him: "No, quite frankly, Mr A, you p... me right off."

Helps also refused another resident a light.

Ms Gudgeon said she was "disgusted" and reported it to the nurse in charge.

She added that after 6pm on the Sunday evening colleagues approached her saying Resident A was missing.

She said: "All the carers went their separate ways to search the building. We searched the bathrooms and toilets and he was nowhere to be found."

Ms Gudgeon found a back door open and went along a path to the street and found a confused Resident A standing in the garden of a nearby block of flats.

She said: "He was lucky because there is a main road to the side of that."

Resident A was checked for injuries but was unharmed.

None of the staff had heard the alarm and, as Ms Gudgeon brought Resident A back inside, she noticed the red light flashing in front of the hallway.

She said: "The alarm system had been turned off – there was no noise coming from it."

Another care assistant had earlier seen Helps turn the switch off, which meant residents’ call bells in their rooms were silenced.

Ms Gudgeon added: "When we got back Mr Helps was in the bar lounge. He wasn’t aware a resident had got out or that we were searching."

The home manager, Julie Hammond, told the panel how the other nurses and assistants had complained about Helps’ behaviour.

Helps later left the home.

Panel chairman Rachel O’Connell said his actions amounted to "psychological and verbal abuse" of the patients in his care.

She said Helps had been given a five-year caution by the Nursing and Midwifery Council in 2005 for increasing methadone for a patient when he was supposed to be weaning him off the drug.

And he had already faced three internal hearings arising from his poor treatment of residents at the substance misuse service in Ashton-under-Lyne.

Helps was struck off the register.

What the care home says ...

"We are coping with Mr Helps’ dismissal in a very positive way. This whole case is a good example of the whistle-blowing process we have running throughout the home. This bad example set by Mr Helps was brought to light by junior members of staff who were very dissatisfied with his performance. As soon as this was brought to my attention I immediately began disciplinary proceedings and called the authorities. I think the punishment Mr Helps has received is well deserved." Mapleford Nursing Home proprietor, David Lewis.