A male nurse who squeezed a student’s breast and touched her vagina while demonstrating how to conduct a head to toe patient assessment and then said she could “sit on his face” has had his registration suspended for two months. The man, who also fondled an unconscious female patient’s breasts while she was in the intensive care unit at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, was recently reprimanded by a tribunal for engaging in professional misconduct. The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia took Alfredo Crocetti to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal over the two incidents, which happened in 2012 and 2014. Mr Crocetti came to the attention of the professional authority after he inappropriately put his hand inside a student’s bra, removed the cup, touched and squeezed her bare breast while teaching an acute care class at Victoria University in 2014. During the “demonstration” of a head to toe assessment on a patient, the tribunal heard that Mr Crocetti put his hand down the woman’s outer leg garment before touching her inner thighs and vagina over her underpants. Mr Crocetti also removed his shirt so the student could touch his bare torso as part of the “assessment” and made sexually suggestive comments, including “you can sit on my face if you like”. Another student was present at the time. The matter was first raised with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency by the director of learning and teaching in the College of Health and Biomedicine at Victoria University. The subsequent investigation raised separate concerns about Mr Crocetti’s behaviour while he was working an overnight shift in the intensive care unit at Royal Melbourne Hospital in 2012. The tribunal heard that Mr Crocetti was standing next to the bed of an unconscious patient when he placed his hands on her bare breasts while the sheet was arranged near her waist. The touching was without clinical justification, the tribunal heard. In a joint ruling, the tribunal’s members found that Mr Corcetti’s conduct was a “fundamental breach” of the trust patients place in nurses charged with their care. “He did not actively preserve the dignity of his patient or recognise her vulnerability and powerlessness. The patient was unconscious,” they said. “It also caused distress to nurse colleagues who observed the conduct.” Mr Corcetti’s behaviour while teaching student nurses at Victoria University was described as “an abuse of his position of trust and authority”. “[It] represented a gross lack of respect for the students under his supervision and disregard for his important role as a student nurse educator,” the tribunal found. Mr Crocetti agreed to the statement of facts presented to the tribunal. He had initially sought to deny or justify the student allegation and argued that the incident which took place in the intensive care unit two years earlier had been dealt with by the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Once returning from his two-month suspension, Mr Crocetti will not be allowed to have face-to-face contact with patients for an extra four months. He is also banned from teaching for another 12 months. Before resuming contact with patients, Mr Crocetti must also undertake four hours of education on the topic of “identifying and maintaining professional boundaries”. Mr Crocetti, a registered nurse since 1990, was working at a general practice in North Melbourne, where his contact with patients had been supervised while the mattter has been resolved.
