Hospital parking: Nurse quits NHS after getting £80 fine while treating patient in cardiac arrest

Sally Plummer says she was also hit with a fine for making a mistake as her mother was rushed to A&E

A former nurse quit the NHS after she got an £80 parking ticket, having stayed late to treat a critically-ill patient.

Sally Plummer said she stayed after the end of her shift when a patient suffered a cardiac arrest, and was fined because she could not leave their side to change her ticket.

She told Good Morning Britain she had also been fined while her mother was being rushed to accident and emergency on a separate occasion, and that she had left the health service because of the amount of money she was losing to parking fines.

She said: “It’s not a nine-to-five job, you can’t leave... The Nursing and Midwifery Council wouldn’t think fairly on you if you did up and go just to change your parking ticket or move your car. I appealed against it and ended up having to pay £80 on top.”

And of the A&E incident, she added: “In my haste I did stop and buy a parking ticket, pinged in my registration number, accidentally missed a digit, contested it with no luck and [the penalty] then went up to £80.”

Ordinary parking charges were already taken automatically from her wages, she told the programme.

It comes after staff at a Cardiff hospital learned they would have to pay thousands of pounds in parking fines.

Last Friday, a judge ruled that the Indigo car park management company could collect the money from University Hospital of Wales workers.

Staff said a lack of spaces at the hospital had forced them to park in unauthorised areas.

Hospitals around the UK have brought in private companies to manage their car parks as their budgets have shrunk due to austerity.

In December, it was revealed they had raked in more than £120m from parking permits the year prior.

And in May this year, Jeremy Corbyn promised a Labour government would make parking free for patients, visitors and NHS staff by raising insurance tax on private healthcare.