A hopelessly incompetent midwife was sacked after her shoddy work was found to have put babies and mums at risk.
Liverpool Women's Hospital referred Rosemarie Wilding to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), which regulates the register of nurses and midwives licensed to practise in the UK, on January 6, 2019.
The hospital had sacked Ms Wilding from her role as a band 6 midwife the previous year after she failed to improve her performance.
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The NMC laid 24 charges and subcharges against Ms Wilding and she was placed before an independent panel of assessors which found 17 of them proved and suspended her from the register for 12 months.
The panel heard Ms Wilding had failed to record changes in babies heart rates, missed warning signs for sepsis in pregnant mums and filed confusing and contradictory paperwork.
Her managers also believed she had demonstrated a lack of ability to "escalate and deal with emergencies" and prioritise patients.
She was cleared, however, of one charge of deliberately falsifying a patient's medical records to cover up a mistake.
Among the charges, Ms Wilding was found to have missed a "red flag" for sepsis when an at-risk mum attended with abdominal pain and changes to her urine.
She repeatedly failed to interpret cardiotocography (CTC) readings correctly, which monitor the baby's heart rate, and missed potential warning signs.
One of her colleagues described an incident in which she had to prompt Ms Wilding to take action for a patient identified as at risk.
The witness said: "I was trying to prompt [Mrs Wilding] on what we needed to do after the observations and CTG set up to determine fetal wellbeing...
"I had to prompt her to bleep the doctors to inform them of the [patient's condition]
"I had to intervene as I did not think she was going to take any action."
On another occasion, Ms Wilding told her colleagues she did not know how to use an IMED machine, a standard piece of medical equipment that helps run drugs into patients.
One witness said Ms Wilding had told her she did not know how to use it, and informed the NMC panel: "I talked her through the process two or three times and she would have been shown numerous times before by others, however she was still struggling to use it".
The NMC suggested to the panel: "Mrs Wilding’s actions in respect of the charges involves placing patients and potentially colleagues at risk of harm; her actions have brought the nursing profession into disrepute; an informed member of the public would see Mrs Wilding’s actions as conduct which falls far below the standard expected of a Registered Midwife; and by failing to provide safe care, Mrs Wilding breached a fundamental tenet of the profession."
Ms Wilding was not represented at the panel and had told a case worker during the investigatory process that she no longer worked as a midwife and did not want "anything to do with midwifery".
The panel stated that in cases where incompetence is found but not misconduct, they are not able to strike nurses or midwives off the register permanently.
However it opted to suspend Ms Wilding for the maximum time available, a ban that can be renewed after it has expired by a new panel.
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