A nurse put her feet up to read a newspaper and refused to treat an 80-year-old woman in agony with a bleeding arm, a medical tribunal heard.

Sue Potts, 43, regularly slept on duty at the nursing home and could not be bothered to treat the patient.

Ms Potts, who lives in Hove, told the woman she would have her moved to a lunatic asylum.

She never gave patients medicine herself but left the job to care assistants, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) was told yesterday.

Ms Potts said if she had her way all patients would be confined to bed and "perfume would be sprayed when relatives came to visit to hide the smell of urine and bedsores."

Andrew Griffin, solicitor for the NMC, said her failure to treat the 80-year-old was the most serious of the nine charges of misconduct at the 50-bed nursing home on the South Coast.

Mr Griffin said the 80-year-old, named only as Patient A, was a retired midwifery tutor who had been through triple bypass surgery.

Patient A rang a bell which Ms Potts allegedly told the care assistants not to answer on the night of December 28, 2001.

A care assistant found the patient with a bruised and swollen foot.

Mr Griffin said: "Ms Potts had no interest in inspecting the foot in question."

Later care assistant Diane Wallace saw Patient A had "a large skin tear oozing blood" on her arm.

She suggested Ms Potts, who had her feet up reading the paper, ought to treat the woman.

"Susan Potts replied 'No way'," Mr Griffin said.

The next morning, Ms Potts told Patient A: "I've bloody had enough of you. I am going to get you moved out of here into a lunatic asylum where you belong."

At a disciplinary hearing, Ms Potts admitted she had refused to deal with the skin tear.

In a further misconduct charge, Ms Potts found Patient B, a frail elderly Polish man with a broken nose, collapsed on the floor on the night of October 19, 2001.

She allegedly told him: "What the bloody hell do you think you are doing, you stupid man?

"If you are so desperate to sleep on the floor we can arrange it. We will just leave you there."

She is also accused of using inappropriate language with elderly Patient D, a woman in a comatose state most of the time.

While trying to wake her, she allegedly became very angry and said: "If I had my way all patients would stay in bed all the time.

"Perfume would be sprayed when relatives came to visit to hide the smell of bedsores or urine."

All five of the care assistants Ms Potts worked with saw her sleeping on duty.

Mr Griffin said: "They will tell of how difficult it was to wake her up," Mr Griffin said.

Potts, who is not attending the hearing, could be struck off if found guilty of professional misconduct.

The hearing continues.