Nurse's Professional Registration Suspended After True Crime Video Breach
A nurse who watched true crime videos on her mobile phone during her shift, while eating a Rustlers burger, has been suspended from the professional register for six months. Sandra Marie Young, who had been a registered nurse for four decades, missed critical opportunities to identify alarming changes in a patient's condition because she failed to conduct necessary observations.
Serious Patient Safety Failures at Newcastle Hospital
The incidents occurred while Young was working at Nuffield Hospital in Newcastle, Tyneside. A Nursing and Midwifery Council tribunal heard that during an October 2022 shift, she documented that she had taken patient observations and escalated concerns to the Resident Medical Officer when she had done neither.
Instead, evidence presented to the panel revealed she was elsewhere in the hospital watching non-fiction documentaries on her phone while consuming a burger and crisps. The tribunal, chaired by Tracy Stephenson, found her actions were dishonest and amounted to misconduct that impaired her fitness to practise.
Missed Observations and False Documentation
The panel upheld three charges against Young, specifically that she:
- Failed to take observations after a patient collapsed
- Documented that the patient had a NEWS Score of zero without taking any observations
- Recorded that the patient had been escalated to the RMO when this had not occurred
A ward manager from the hospital provided evidence stating: "Sandra's failure to perform the necessary observations, including vital signs and neurovascular checks, directly compromised the patient's safety. Had she followed proper protocol, she would have identified any alarming changes in his condition."
Dishonest Conduct and Professional Consequences
The tribunal determined that Young's actions were deliberately misleading. The panel stated: "The panel was satisfied that at the time Miss Young recorded that she had taken observations and escalated concerns to the RMO, she would have known that she had not done so."
They applied an objective test, concluding that "an ordinary, decent person would consider Miss Young's actions to be dishonest." Witness testimony described her sitting at a computer logged into the hospital's TrakCare system while eating and watching videos during working hours, not during an authorised break.
Limited Remorse and Suspension Decision
In deciding the six-month suspension, the panel noted that while Young had admitted the charges early and stated she had no intention of returning to nursing, she had failed to provide a reflective statement acknowledging the seriousness of her conduct or take steps to remediate her behaviour.
Young resigned from her position the day after the October 2022 incident and has not worked as a nurse since. The tribunal cleared her of a separate charge from March 2021 relating to failing to escalate a patient for pain relief review.
The NEWS (National Early Warning Score) system, which Young falsely documented, is designed to quickly identify deteriorating patients through simple observations. Her failure to use this system properly represented a significant breach of professional nursing standards.
