A Nigerian-born nurse, Ms Chimzuruoke Okembunachi, has been deregistered in Australia after a tribunal found that she repeatedly slept while on duty during night shifts at an aged care facility in Sydney, an action it ruled amounted to professional misconduct.
Ms Okembunachi, 25, had her nursing registration cancelled and her name removed from the register following a decision by the New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT), which was delivered on Tuesday.
The tribunal heard that Ms Okembunachi began work as a registered nurse at Hardi Aged Care in Guildford, western Sydney, in February 2024. Barely a month later, she was suspended from duty and subsequently resigned from her position.
According to the ruling, she was rostered for several night shifts between March 13 and March 27, 2024, during which she was the sole registered nurse supervising between three and four assistants-in-nursing and approximately 100 elderly residents. The tribunal found that on six separate nights, she failed to properly discharge her duties after falling asleep while on duty.
On three of those occasions, residents reportedly missed their prescribed doses of morphine because the nurse was asleep. Evidence before the tribunal showed that during one shift on the night of March 21 to 22, an assistant-in-nursing switched on the light at the nurses’ station to wake her, only for Ms Okembunachi to turn the light off and return to sleep moments later.
The tribunal also heard that on March 15, she instructed an assistant-in-nursing to administer Panadol to a male resident suffering from foot pain, despite the assistant not being authorised to give medication. When questioned, Ms Okembunachi reportedly assured the assistant that it was acceptable.
Concerns about her conduct were raised by two nurses on March 27. The following day, she received an email notifying her of her suspension and inviting her to a meeting. About 20 minutes later, she resigned and declined to attend the meeting.
A complaint was subsequently lodged with the Health Care Complaints Commission, which initiated the tribunal proceedings. Her nursing registration was suspended during the investigation.
The tribunal was told that Ms Okembunachi, who relocated from Nigeria to Australia in 2018, completed a Bachelor of Nursing Science at the University of the Sunshine Coast in 2021. She later enrolled in a graduate medicine programme at Western Sydney University.
While working at the aged care facility, she was also studying medicine and dealing with migraines and significant personal and family pressures. The tribunal heard that her younger sister required costly scoliosis surgery earlier in the year, placing financial strain on her family.
In her testimony, Ms Okembunachi accepted responsibility for her actions and expressed remorse. She told the tribunal that, in hindsight, she should not have accepted the night-shift role given the multiple stressors in her life at the time.
“When I slept on night shift, I failed in supervising those staff members and the residents,” she said.
Although she expressed a desire to return to nursing practice in the future and stated that she would avoid night shifts if allowed to practise again, the tribunal ruled that deregistration was necessary due to the seriousness of the misconduct.
“The acts of the practitioner had the potential to endanger the lives of patients under her care,” the panel stated, adding that any sanction short of deregistration would be inadequate.
The tribunal, however, acknowledged that Ms Okembunachi was “clearly remorseful and contrite” and had been honest in her evidence. She has not worked as a nurse since her suspension but continues her medical studies.
Under the ruling, she will be unable to apply for a review of the cancellation order for at least nine months.