Nursing Panel Overturned Again: PSA Appeals Suspension

Yet another appearance by the Nursing & Midwifery Council, who appear to be camping out at the Administrative Court currently, resulted in a reversal of the decision of the Fitness to Practise Committee: Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care v Nursing and Midwifery Council & Anor [2026] EWHC 141 (Admin)  Griffiths J

The Professional Standards Authority challenged a nine-month suspension on the nurse, asserting that she should have been struck off. Other issues concerned whether the decision made four material errors in its findings and whether it failed to give adequate reasons for the decision.

His Lordship said the facts were very grave. The nurse was the only nurse in charge of a vulnerable child patient in a home, as opposed to hospital, setting. There was no-one with her in the room and everything depended upon her.

She accepted in her evidence that the patient might get into difficulties at times other than the times of the standard hourly checks. He had a tracheostomy and there was a risk he might pull out the tube, or that his breathing might be blocked by secretions which he could not clear for himself because of the tube. She accepted that, if she failed to do her job of supervision, the consequences might be (in her word) “fatal”.

Despite this, she deliberately covered the camera so that she could go to sleep without being seen, and she in fact went to sleep for two substantial periods of time. She also failed to do the required hourly checks. She also falsified the record to show she had done checks she had not done. When presented with evidence, she denied sleeping and denied covering the camera in order to sleep and denied that her records were false. She maintained the denial in the course of a formal investigation, both orally and in writing, for a period of about six weeks.

As the Panel recognised, the nurse had a history of previous failings in relation to sleeping on duty which resulted in a warning for 12 months. It was worse than that because the history also included an incorrect record.

Another factor which the Panel did not mention was that on the previous occasion the nurse had escaped a greater sanction in part because of good references, and her assurance that she would not work in a community setting. But she committed misconduct in 2019 in a community setting which was even more exposed than before, and the misconduct was strikingly similar to the admitted misconduct which led to the warning in 2017, although because of elements of dishonesty, it was also worse. The misconduct less than two years later was actual repetition and escalation.

The nurse was within three of the six bullet point examples of dishonesty in the Sanctions Guidance which were more likely to result in striking off. But the Panel saw this as within two of the four bullet point examples of cases in which dishonest conduct would generally be less serious, as a one-off incident, and no personal gain.

The balance of factors identified in the Sanctions and Understanding Fitness to Practise Guidance pointed clearly towards striking off rather than the lesser sanction of a suspension which could not exceed one year and which the Panel decided to limit to nine months.

Giving due weight and deference to the reasoning of the Panel, it was incomplete and unsound and did not support its conclusion that suspension was an appropriate and sufficient sanction on the facts of the nurse’s case. The decision was wrong and the only possible decision in view of the Sanctions and Understanding Fitness to Practise Guidance, and the facts of the case, was that the nurse should have been struck off. The panel’s own findings of primary fact supported this.

The decision was quashed and the court exercised its power to substitute the inevitable and correct decision which was that the nurse be struck off the register.