Amy Barber, 22, died on July 4, 2022, four days after she was found unresponsive in her room at Brooklands Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit, inside Clatterbridge Hospital in Wirral. She had been taken to Arrowe Park Hospital but suffered serious brain injury. Amy had taken her life.
Amy had been diagnosed with emotionally unstable personality disorder and an eating disorder at the age of 14, and was transferred to Brooklands years later after a record of self harm during her teen years.
CCTV contradicted nurse's records
Registered mental health nurse Laurence Tchapong, who was working for an agency, had been assigned to carry out "level two checks" on Amy on the night of June 30, 2022. These checks required her to look through the patient's bedroom window every five minutes, see whether the patient was awake and check for signs of self harm. CCTV showed Tchapong handing Amy a towel at 8.15pm.
Tchapong signed at least 10 observation entries that night, saying she had seen Amy awake, but CCTV footage revealed this had not happened. At 8.40pm, another nurse, Victoria Connelly, went to Amy's room to give her medication and found her unresponsive 25 minutes later. Ms Connelly raised the alarm.
In a meeting with her superior Gill Judson, Tchapong claimed Amy had asked for an apple at 8.40pm and then for a towel five minutes later, so Tchapong went to get those items. She said the next thing she knew was the ward alarms going off. When asked about an entry logged at 8.55pm, she became distressed. She later recalled Amy had been stood brushing her teeth at 8.50pm, and on the 8.55pm log she understood it looked like an 'A' for awake but had put a question mark instead because CPR was being performed.
Nurse convicted of wilful neglect
Tchapong, from Manchester, was found guilty of wilfully neglecting Amy Barber after a trial at Liverpool Crown Court. Her defence said she accepted she had not checked on Amy after 8.15pm but said this was due to other tasks and other patients. She is due to be sentenced on September 1.
Amy's mother Sue, 59, from Nantwich, paid tribute to her daughter, saying: "She was amazing, she was bright, kind, funny and crazily clever. She got 11 A*s at GCSE and then she got stuck in the mental health system. She was fantastic, I know every mother says that but people would tell me the same thing, she really was."
Sue said Amy ran with the Olympic torch in 2012 and was a registered organ donor, so after her death she has helped four people. She added: "We were as close as a mother and daughter can be. Amy was my person."
On Tchapong, Sue said: "Amy was poorly but she wasn't checked on for 25 minutes. She was on five minute checks, which doesn't mean five past, 10 past, but it means she needs to be constantly checked on." She added: "She was doing other things rather than looking after my daughter. I hope she gets a decent punishment. We've had to listen to Amy's last hour over and over again during the trial because she pleaded not guilty."
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