A NURSE has received £8,800 compensation after it was found she was discriminated against,while she was pregnant by a Teesside hospital.

An employment tribunal held in February found that South Tees Hospital NHS Trust and another member of staff discriminated against the nurse, Julia Walker.

It was found that Lauren Walker, who is not related to the victim, accessed Ms Walker’s confidential records to see if she was pregnant.

Ms Walker was told that somebody had accessed her patient database on September 19, 2019 - the day that she had told her colleagues she was expecting twins.

The tribunal report stated: “It transpired that that person who had accessed the database was the second respondent, Ms (Lauren) Walker. The claimant was told this. She found that extremely upsetting. Ms Walker and the claimant had been friends, but the claimant believed that Ms Walker had reacted with scepticism when the claimant told her she was pregnant.

“Ms Walker had accessed the patient database. She had gone to the index of patient names, searched for the claimant, and clicked on the claimant’s name, which took her to the page that we have seen in the bundle.

"That page did not contain any medical information in the sense of details of any appointments. It would have been possible for Ms Walker to view appointment details on there on a different screen but she did not do that.

“Ms Walker said in evidence that the reason she accessed the database was to get the claimant’s address because she wanted to send her flowers to congratulate her on her pregnancy.

"However in a subsequent disciplinary procedure, although she initially said she wanted to send flowers because the claimant was pregnant to congratulate her, she then said she wanted to send flowers as a condolence because she had heard that the claimant had lost the babies.”

The report stated that Lauren Walker did not send Ms Walker any flowers.

Ms Walker had a miscarriage and then took a period of leave.

She won the case against the trust for contravention of the Equality Act 2010.

She was employed as a Patient Flow Coordinator (PFC) at the first respondent trust and until summer 2018 she was employed at Band 3.

In the summer of 2018 there was a reorganisation of this role. As part of that process there were changes made to the PFC role and it was upgraded to Band 4 across the board.

She worked at The James Cook University Hospital.

As well as the £8,800 compensation she also received £1304.68 interest.

A South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said: “Although the tribunal found that no patient medical data was accessed in this case which occurred three years ago, the trust strengthened procedures at the time to help prevent similar circumstances occurring in the future.”