Nursing and Midwifery Council determination — substantive hearing

NMC panel suspends nurse Sandeep Selvaraj for 12 months over dishonesty and care failings

A Nursing and Midwifery Council panel has suspended nurse Sandeep Selvaraj for 12 months, finding repeated failures in fundamental nursing care and four occasions of dishonesty in which he concealed those failures, once by forging a colleague's signature on a medication record.

MedicWatch editorial · Published 14 August 2026 · Updated 18 August 2026

Suspension (suspended from practice) — 1 year

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What does “suspended from practice” mean?

A suspension is a fixed-term pause on the right to practise. The practitioner cannot work in the regulated profession during the suspension. At the end of the period the suspension may be extended, replaced with another sanction, or lifted on review.

Concerning Sandeep Selvaraj, nurse (Nursing and Midwifery Council 21B1107O).

Decision date: 14 August 2026 · Hearing started 5 May 2026 and ended 14 August 2026

In plain English

The NMC's Fitness to Practise Committee found that Sandeep Selvaraj, a registered adult nurse at Ulster Hospital, showed a lack of competence in medication administration, record keeping and wound care over about three years, and acted dishonestly on four occasions to conceal failures in patient care, including forging a colleague's signature. The panel found his fitness to practise impaired and suspended him for 12 months, with a review before the order ends.

Charges

Type of case: misconduct / lack of competence. Charge 1 alleged that between 5 January 2021 and 16 May 2024 Mr Selvaraj failed to demonstrate the standards of knowledge, skills and judgment required to practise without supervision as a Band 5 nurse, including not recognising that 30ml of local anaesthetic had been drawn up, incorrectly documenting swab sizes, failing to administer medication, record fluid balances, complete patient notes or provide wound care appropriately on scheduled dates, completing flowcharts retrospectively, and inaccurately documenting a patient's mobility. Charges 2 to 4 alleged a failure to administer Tapentadol, forging a colleague's signature to state it had been administered, denying the error to a colleague, and dishonesty in seeking to cover up a failure to provide patient care. Further charges alleged failing to escalate a NEWS score of 5, stating a patient's skin had been checked when it had not, recording paracetamol as administered at 14.00 when it had not, leaving that paracetamol unsafely in the patient's room, stating a resuscitation course had been passed when it had not, copying and pasting information into patient notes, and stating that analgesia had been offered and refused and that fluid output had been measured when neither had occurred, with associated dishonesty charges. Charges 1a, 1d, 1e, 1f, 1g, 1j, 2, 3a, 3b, 4 and 12 were proved by admission; charges 1c, 1i, 6 (in part), 7, 8a, 8b, 9, 13a, 13b and 14 were found proved; charges 1b, 1h, 5, 10 and 11 were found not proved.

Findings

The panel found the facts proved in charge 1 amounted to a lack of competence, being an unacceptably low standard of professional performance across a fair sample of work over approximately three years and across different clinical settings, despite prolonged supervision and capability management. It found charges 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14 amounted to misconduct, breaching fundamental tenets including honesty, integrity, patient safety, accurate record keeping and the duty of candour. The panel found all four limbs of the Grant test engaged. It accepted Mr Selvaraj had engaged fully, made admissions, provided a reflective piece and completed some training, but found his insight limited and the evidence of remediation insufficient, with no recent evidence of safe practice. It found his fitness to practise currently impaired on both public protection and public interest grounds. On sanction the panel concluded that conditions of practice could not address the attitudinal concern arising from repeated dishonesty, but that the misconduct was not fundamentally incompatible with continued registration, and that striking off would be disproportionate. It imposed a suspension order for 12 months with a review at the end of that period, and an interim suspension order for 18 months to cover the appeal period.

Mitigating factors

The panel took into account the following mitigating features: 11 admissions made at the outset of the hearing, representing a significant proportion of the charges; admissions made at a local level; full engagement with the NMC fitness to practise process, including continued attendance after the May 2026 adjournment; a reflective statement demonstrating some insight and remorse in which he expressly acknowledged he had been dishonest rather than minimising it; evidence of some relevant training, including e-learning on medication administration, wound management and communication; a willingness to undertake further training and strengthen practice; a significant period between approximately October 2021 and March 2022 when formal mentorship and capability support was absent; inconsistency in the supervision and mentorship available while adapting to UK nursing practice; and that he was an internationally educated nurse adapting to different clinical settings and systems in the UK.

Aggravating factors

The panel took into account the following aggravating features: repeated and deliberate dishonesty involving four separate incidents between February 2023 and January 2024; that the dishonesty formed a pattern connected with clinical practice rather than a single isolated lapse; the serious incident involving the forgery of a colleague's signature in connection with the recording of medication administration; a serious breach of trust with colleagues arising from that falsification and the creation of an inaccurate clinical record; that aspects of the dishonesty were directly connected with patient care and patient safety; attempts to conceal failures in care by recording that care had been provided when it had not; breaches of the professional duty of candour; the involvement of a vulnerable patient with dementia whose paracetamol was falsely recorded as administered and left unsupervised in their room; repeated failures concerning fundamental aspects of nursing care including medication administration, record keeping, wound care, fluid balance monitoring, communication and professional accountability; a sustained period of lack of competence rather than isolated clinical failings; limited insight and remediation; and the absence of significant additional evidence of strengthened insight or remediation since the last sitting in May 2026.

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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