Nursing and Midwifery Council determination — substantive hearing
NMC panel strikes off mental health nurse Dawn Ellerby over dishonesty and competence failings
The Nursing and Midwifery Council's Fitness to Practise Committee has struck mental health nurse Dawn Ellerby off the register, finding her fitness to practise impaired by a lack of competence and misconduct that included repeated dishonesty and breaching restrictions on handling medication.
MedicWatch editorial · Published 16 July 2026 · Updated 21 July 2026
Erasure (struck off the register)
Added to MedicWatch: 21 July 2026Report a correction
What does “struck off the register” mean?
Being struck off (the regulator calls this "erasure") removes the practitioner from the register. They are no longer permitted to practise this profession in the UK. Erasure can be reviewed after a minimum of five years, but is otherwise indefinite.
Concerning Dawn Ellerby, nurse (Nursing and Midwifery Council 12J0124E).
Decision date: 16 July 2026 · Hearing started 22 November 2024 and ended 16 July 2026
In plain English
The NMC found that Dawn Alison Ellerby, a mental health nurse, showed a lack of competence in fundamental nursing tasks and committed misconduct, including repeated dishonesty on three occasions, disregarding restrictions on handling medication, and intimidating colleagues, between 2018 and 2022. The Fitness to Practise Committee found her fitness to practise impaired and, noting a previous dishonesty finding and limited insight, imposed a striking-off order removing her from the register.
Charges
The NMC alleged that, between October 2018 and August 2022 while employed as a Band 5 mental health nurse, Mrs Ellerby failed to demonstrate the standards of knowledge, skill and judgement required to practise, including medication administration and record-keeping errors and an inability to perform basic nursing tasks. It was further alleged that she behaved aggressively and intimidatingly towards colleagues, dishonestly misrepresented and concealed local restrictions placed on her practice, worked outside the scope of her competence, and dishonestly misled a colleague about a doctor's authorisation of medication. The charges were brought as lack of competence and misconduct.
Findings
The panel found many charges proved, some by Mrs Ellerby's own admissions and others on the evidence, while finding a number not proved and several with no case to answer. It determined that her proved failings in fundamental areas of nursing amounted to a lack of competence, and that her further conduct - including dishonesty on three occasions, disregard for local medication restrictions, and intimidating behaviour towards colleagues - amounted to misconduct. The panel found her fitness to practise currently impaired on both public protection and public interest grounds, concluding that her insight was limited, her failings largely unremedied, and that deep-seated attitudinal concerns and repeated dishonesty, together with a previous fitness to practise finding, made the case one of the highest risk.
Mitigating and aggravating factors
Mitigating factors
The panel identified one mitigating feature: that she made early admissions to some of the charges and apologised for some of her actions.
Aggravating factors
The panel identified: her failings in basic nursing practice and her misconduct placed Patients B, D, F, P and Q at unwarranted risk of harm; the misconduct and lack of competence persisted over an extensive period; insufficient insight into the seriousness and impact of her failings; continued deflection of responsibility and blaming of others; refusal to follow instructions and abide by restrictions, and intimidating behaviour towards colleagues; repeated dishonesty on three separate occasions linked to her clinical practice; and a previous fitness to practise finding with similar concerns of dishonesty and failure to disclose a restriction.
Source
All facts on this page are drawn from the publicly published Nursing and Midwifery Council determination linked below. MedicWatch does not editorialise the regulator’s findings.
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