High Court orders nurse to be struck off after watchdog’s successful appeal

In Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care v Nursing and Midwifery Council & Anor [2026] EWHC 610 (Admin) (17 March 2026), the High Court has ruled that a nurse whose conduct towards vulnerable care‑home residents was described as humiliating, uncaring and a serious breach of professional standards must be struck off the register, after the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) successfully challenged the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) earlier decision to impose only a 12‑month suspension.

In a judgment handed down on 17 March 2026, Deputy High Court Judge Sarah Crowther KC found that the NMC’s Fitness to Practise Committee had erred in several key respects when assessing both the facts and the appropriate sanction in the case of Joanna Budzichowska, a registered nurse who faced multiple allegations arising from her work at two care homes between 2018 and 2022.

The PSA appealed after the NMC panel found a series of misconduct charges proven—including failing to carry out observations on a deteriorating resident, swinging a call bell at another, refusing to assist a resident who had fallen, and shoving a dementia patient into a lift—but opted for suspension rather than erasure. The regulator also challenged the panel’s decision not to find that Budzichowska intended to humiliate a resident during an incident in which he was left crawling on the floor, soaked in urine, while she sat in a chair he was trying to reach.

Judge Crowther held that the panel’s reasoning on this point was inadequate and that, on the evidence, the only proper conclusion was that the nurse had intended to humiliate the resident. She substituted a finding that the charge was proven. She also found procedural unfairness in the panel’s dismissal of a related allegation that the nurse had grabbed another resident’s face, noting that the panel had relied on a distinction between “grabbing” and “squashing cheeks” that had never been put to the witness.

Turning to sanction, the court concluded that the NMC panel had been “outside the range of responses open to it” in imposing a suspension. The judge said the panel had failed to apply its own Sanctions Guidance properly, had placed irrational weight on character testimonials, and had not grappled with whether the conduct raised fundamental questions about the nurse’s professionalism. The behaviour, she said, amounted to abuse of vulnerable adults, deliberate harm, and a pattern of uncaring conduct that could not be remedied through training.

Judge Crowther ruled that public confidence in the nursing profession required Budzichowska’s removal from the register, observing that members of the public “would be astonished” if she were allowed to continue practising. She substituted a striking‑off order in place of the suspension. Both parties later confirmed that, in light of the sanction outcome, there was no need to remit the outstanding factual issue on one remaining charge.

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