Madona Moses

Introduction

Madona Moses is a nurse who worked at Birmingham Heartlands hospital and was struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) after silencing a seriously ill patient’s monitoring alarm. Colleagues told an NMC hearing that Moses had silenced an alarm indicating falling blood pressure, and that the system on the ward was then muted to stop it sounding again. The incident took place in July 2018, and the NMC’s Fitness to Practise panel found her actions had “caused actual harm” to the patient, citing “limited insight and remorse” before removing her from the nursing register.

Background Information

Moses worked on a ward at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham, part of what is now the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation area. Her case arose from a night shift in July 2018, when a monitoring alarm attached to a seriously ill patient began sounding in a bed-space she was responsible for. The NMC’s case against her was built substantially on the accounts of her own colleagues and on what she told the hospital trust’s subsequent investigation.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated vs. alleged. The findings against Moses were made by the NMC’s Fitness to Practise panel, the regulatory body for nursing in the UK, on the civil standard such panels apply; they are regulatory findings, not criminal convictions, and no criminal proceedings were reported. Her own account to investigators — a lapse in judgement while overwhelmed — is included as she gave it.

Colleagues of Moses told the NMC hearing she had silenced an alarm which indicated falling blood pressure, and that the system on the ward was then muted to stop it sounding again. The NMC Fitness to Practise panel also found she had failed to escalate the patient’s condition to senior colleagues, and wrongly told the family that the patient was being kept artificially alive for organ donation.

Moses told the trust’s subsequent investigation: “The monitor in my bed-space was alarming and I didn’t want bother the other members of staff, nor did I want to annoyed anybody, so I adjusted the alarm limit.” She described a lapse in her judgement when she was overwhelmed during a night shift.

Public Reaction and Consequences

In its decision, the NMC said the nurse’s actions had “caused actual harm” to the patient, and that she had shown “limited insight and remorse”. The regulator also said she showed “limited remorse” at an earlier stage of its consideration of the case.

Moses declined to take part in the hearing, but wrote to the panel saying she had left the profession. Heartlands Hospital was contacted for a response at the time of reporting.

Current Status

Moses was suspended from the register pending a 28-day appeal period, after which the permanent striking-off order would come into force. The decision, reported by the BBC on May 28, 2024, followed an NMC Fitness to Practise panel hearing earlier that month, six years after the July 2018 incident. She had already told the panel she had left the profession, and no appeal against the striking-off order was reported in the sources covering the case.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The striking-off formally ended Moses’s nursing registration, closing off the profession she had already told the panel she had left. The case became one of the reference examples in BBC reporting of nursing misconduct — published under the headline “Nurse who silenced patient’s alarm struck off” — turning on a single night-shift decision with cascading consequences: an alarm silenced, a system muted so it could not sound again, a failure to escalate, and an incorrect statement to a family about organ donation. The panel’s finding of “actual harm” placed the case firmly in the category of misconduct with a realized patient-safety consequence rather than a near miss, and her “limited insight and remorse” foreclosed the mitigation that might otherwise have supported a lesser sanction.

The six-year gap between the July 2018 incident and the 2024 striking-off decision reflected the length of the regulatory process, not any doubt about the facts: her own account to the trust’s investigation — that she adjusted the alarm limit because she did not want to bother colleagues — was the centrepiece of the case against her. For the ward at Heartlands Hospital, the case established that silencing a monitoring alarm and muting the system is treated as conduct putting a seriously ill patient at the centre of harm, whatever the pressure on the shift; for Moses personally, the admission she had left the profession meant the striking-off order formalised an exit she had already made, while ensuring the door to re-registration stayed closed.