A mental health nurse who administered an incorrect medication and then falsified patient records to conceal the error has been removed from the nursing register. Santa Mandera, who worked at an unnamed private psychiatric hospital in Wandsworth, South London, faced a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) misconduct panel that concluded her fitness to practise was impaired. The panel's findings, released in a new report, described her conduct as showing “a disregard for fundamental nursing responsibilities.”
Incidents at Wandsworth hospital
The NMC panel investigated a series of incidents that occurred while Mandera was employed at the hospital. The hospital launched an internal investigation in August 2021, during which Mandera denied the charges. She resigned from her position on November 4, 2021, and the case was subsequently referred to the NMC in January 2022.
The panel found that on March 18, 2021, Mandera left a high-risk patient unsupervised for approximately 20 minutes. More seriously, on July 27, 2021, she administered more than double the correct dose of Diazepam to another patient. On the same shift, she gave a patient a dose of Olanzapine after a doctor had decided the medication should be discontinued. To hide this error, Mandera recorded that she had administered the drug at midnight, hoping the time discrepancy would mask the mistake.
Pattern of misconduct
The panel also found that Mandera had copied and pasted clinical notes from one patient's records to another's, an issue that was flagged as a concern on August 9, 2021. Rosie Welsh, representing the NMC, argued that these were “not isolated matters of poor practice but represent serious failures in fundamental nursing duties, including the supervision of a vulnerable patient, safe administration of medication, accurate record keeping, and maintaining honesty and integrity within professional practice.”
In her defence, Priya Khanna, representing Mandera, said her client had been coping with difficult personal circumstances and had completed additional training to improve her practice since the incidents. However, the panel ruled that Mandera's actions fell “seriously short” of the standards expected of a registered nurse and amounted to misconduct.
Decision to strike off
The panel's report stated: “The panel considered that the concerns were wide-ranging and involved different areas of nursing practice, including failures to undertake appropriate observations, failures in medication administration, failures in record keeping, inaccurate documentation, and a failure to demonstrate openness and honesty when concerns arose.” It further noted that these were “not isolated errors but a pattern of conduct affecting more than one patient over a five-month period.” The panel decided to strike Mandera from the register, meaning she can no longer practise as a nurse in the UK.
