Wandsworth nurse struck off for patient safety failures

Santa Mandera, a nurse who worked at a private psychiatric hospital in Wandsworth, has been removed from the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register. The decision, made in July 2026, followed findings that her conduct impaired her fitness to practise as a nurse.

Patient Safety Incidents

A misconduct panel found that on July 27, 2021, Ms Mandera administered more than double the correct dose of Diazepam to a patient. On the same shift, she gave another patient a dose of Olanzapine after a doctor had decided against it. The panel found she then recorded giving this patient a dose at midnight in an attempt to conceal the error.

Further concerns arose on March 18, 2021, when Ms Mandera left a high-risk patient unsupervised for approximately 20 minutes. The panel also found that Ms Mandera had mistakenly copied and pasted notes from one patient's records to another's, a concern raised on August 9, 2021.

Panel Findings and Consequences

Rosie Welsh, representing the NMC, stated that these incidents were not isolated but represented serious failures in fundamental nursing duties, including patient supervision, medication administration, accurate record keeping, and professional integrity. Ms Mandera's representative, Priya Khanna, noted that Ms Mandera had been dealing with personal difficulties and had undertaken further training.

However, the panel concluded that Ms Mandera's actions fell seriously short of expected standards and constituted misconduct. The report detailed that the concerns were wide-ranging, affecting multiple patients over a five-month period, and involved failures in observations, medication administration, and record keeping, as well as a lack of openness when issues arose. The panel determined that striking Ms Mandera from the register was necessary to protect the public.

An investigation into Ms Mandera's conduct began in August 2021, at which time she denied the charges. She resigned from the hospital on November 4, 2021, and was referred to the NMC in January 2022.