Dhanwati Ramdarass
Introduction
Dhanwati Ramdarass is a registered mental health nurse from Hertfordshire who was suspended for six months by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) on 25 March 2026, at the end of a hearing that had run since October 2025. The panel found that as the registered provider and nominated individual of a care home — a role carrying full oversight responsibility — she failed to keep medication administration training up to date or recorded, failed to ensure risk assessments covered the state of a resident’s bedroom and the home’s food hygiene, and failed to identify poor practice in food safety. It also found she sat by at a meeting where a resident with full capacity was coerced into signing a care plan. The panel concluded vulnerable patients were exposed to a serious risk of harm, and an 18-month interim suspension order covers any appeal .
Background Information
This is a leadership-case, not a bedside-case: the charges concerned what Ramdarass, as the home’s registered provider and nominated individual, ensured or failed to ensure as of 28 June 2022. Several charges were proved, some by admission; others were not proved or attracted a no-case-to-answer finding. The panel’s aggravating findings show why the leadership frame mattered — an experienced nurse in charge of a home taking on residents during a staffing shortage multiplies every individual failing .
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Adjudicated (regulatory), partly admitted. The findings below are those of an NMC Fitness to Practise Committee — a civil regulatory process, not a criminal conviction.
The proved charges fell into clusters. On training: failure to ensure her own and her staff’s medication administration training was up to date or recorded. On risk: failure to ensure risk assessments addressed the condition of Resident A’s bedroom, and failure to ensure risk assessments were completed in relation to food hygiene. On oversight: failure to take steps to identify poor practice within the Home in relation to food safety and hygiene. A further cluster concerned her conduct at a meeting where Resident A was placed under restrictions .
That meeting is the case’s sharpest finding. The panel’s aggravating factors record that Ramdarass “was at the meeting when restrictions were placed on Resident A and, despite knowing Resident A had full capacity, allowed her to be coerced into signing a care plan, constituting an abuse of position of trust.” The panel found this and the wider pattern — poor risk assessments, inadequate health and safety protocols, poor safeguarding, lack of staff training — exposed vulnerable patients to a serious risk of harm, and that her insight remained limited .
Mitigation was substantial and expressly credited: immediate steps to rectify some issues identified by a CQC inspection; some acceptance of her role and apologies; admissions made at the start of proceedings; the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the stress in the system at the time; challenging personal circumstances including caring responsibilities for family abroad; and training undertaken to strengthen her practice as a registered nurse. Against that stood her experience, her leadership role with full oversight, the pattern over time, and the decision to take on residents while the Home was short-staffed, which the panel found increased existing risks .
The panel found her fitness to practise impaired by reason of misconduct and determined a six-month suspension to be the proportionate sanction — below striking off, above any lesser disposal, for a nurse who owned the system in which the failures sat .
Public Reaction and Consequences
The consequence is the six-month suspension order, imposed on 25 March 2026, with an 18-month interim suspension order pending appeal. The case is recorded in MedicWatch’s listing of nurses suspended in 2026; no public statement from Ramdarass or from the home appears in the fetched record beyond the determination itself .
The CQC’s role in surfacing some of the issues — cited in the panel’s mitigation findings — places the case in the overlap between care-quality regulation and professional regulation. Nothing in the fetched record establishes any criminal charge or prosecution arising from the home’s failings, and none should be inferred from this page .
Current Status
Ramdarass is a suspended nurse under a six-month order imposed on 25 March 2026, with the 18-month interim order in force across the appeal window. The determination’s public summary does not record a review hearing; her standing as the home’s registered provider and nominated individual is a separate regulatory matter under CQC rules, on which the fetched record is silent .
Impact on Their Career/Life
A nurse can absorb a clinical failing with retraining; a registered provider absorbs one differently, because the finding is about the system she owned. The panel’s finding that she watched a resident with full capacity be coerced into signing a care plan — and did nothing — is the entry that will define the case, and the limited-insight finding is what a future panel will test first. The credited mitigation, from the CQC rectification to the pandemic context, is the reason the outcome is suspension rather than erasure .