'Deplorable' QA hospital nurse banned after falling asleep when feeding babies and leaving sick baby

Emelyn Enad has been suspended from working as a nurse for 12 months in order to protect the public following her “deplorable” misconduct, an investigation by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) concluded.

Ms Enad’s conduct came under the spotlight during her time working in the neonatal ward at QA between January 2021 and June 2022.

Concerns were also raised by Oak Lodge Care Home in Southampton, where Ms Enad worked as an agency nurse in August 2021, after she failed to administer medication, or the correct doses, to patients.

“The charges took place over a period of eight months, and therefore demonstrate repeated misconduct and a failure to acknowledge and improve on poor behaviour during that time,” the NMC said in its published conclusions.

“This also ties into the registrant’s lack of insight. Although the Registrant did raise mitigation during internal conversations, at no point did she express any sense of remorse, sympathy or concern.

“There is also no record of efforts made to address the issues in her performance. To the contrary, each witness who gave evidence in respect of the proven charges noted that her attitude was one of indifference.”

The report stated how QA reported a number of concerns between July 2021 and February 2022. These included “poor communication with staff members and parents of patients, poor observation skills, a failure to identify deteriorating patients, a failure to escalate concerns, incorrect breastmilk administered to a baby, not correctly reporting and/or escalating the error and falling asleep on shift whilst feeding babies”.

The hospital carried out an investigation that was never completed after Ms Enad resigned on 19 June 2022.

Giving evidence to the panel, a staff member revealed concerns when a baby that needed monitoring was left alone in an isolation cubicle. “I went into the cubicle and the baby’s red alarm was going off. When Emelyn returned after approximately 10 minutes I asked her if she had asked anyone to cover her whilst she was out, she said ‘no, I forgot’,” the witness said.

“I explained to her that it was unsafe to leave the cubicle unattended and she is accountable for that baby. I informed her that if she needs to leave for any reason then to ask someone to cover her. For the rest of the night she did ask for cover whenever she needed to leave the cubicle.”

The panel also heard evidence that Ms Enad “fell asleep while feeding two different babies and while writing notes, missing alarms as she slept”.

The panel concluded the “conduct therefore fell seriously short of what is required” and was “correctly characterised as deplorable”.