Marina Tchampet

Introduction

Marina Tchampet is a registered nurse whose name was removed from the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register not by the regulator’s own panel but by the High Court of Justice. On 30 January 2026, Mr Justice Griffiths allowed an appeal by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) against an NMC panel’s decision to suspend Tchampet for nine months, quashed that decision, and substituted the sanction the panel had declined to impose: a striking-off order. The underlying misconduct, which she admitted, was sleeping for nearly four hours while on a one-to-one night shift caring for a ventilated, quadriplegic ten-year-old boy, covering the room’s CCTV camera with a cloth to do so, and falsifying his observation chart to show hourly checks she had not performed.

Background Information

Tchampet qualified as a nurse in September 2012 after training at the University of Leeds and, by her own evidence, practised exclusively as a paediatric nurse. The 2019 case was not her first. Between 2015 and 2016, while supplying two-to-one care for a severely disabled child with complex care needs, multiple types of seizures and autism — referred to as Patient A — a healthcare assistant raised concerns that Tchampet had slept on duty on various dates, supported by photographic evidence, and Patient A’s mother raised concerns about an inaccurate handwritten seizure-treatment protocol Tchampet had produced, which if followed instead of the consultant’s document could have led to the child receiving excessive medication. On that occasion the NMC’s case examiners accepted her assurances of insight, and the matter closed with a twelve-month written warning in August 2017 — a warning that recorded she had “shown insight into her conduct and addressed any risks in your practice”. The judge later called that assessment into question in the starkest terms.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated vs. alleged. The findings below were found proved by an NMC Fitness to Practise panel — by Tchampet’s own admission — and the final sanction was substituted by the High Court on appeal. They are regulatory findings, not criminal convictions.

On the night of 17 to 18 December 2019, Tchampet worked a one-to-one night shift at the home of Child A, a ten-year-old boy with a closed spinal fracture who was quadriplegic, had no respiratory effort of his own, and was ventilated through a tracheostomy. The judge recorded that his condition was such that, should she not perform her tasks, the consequences might be fatal. Tchampet covered the CCTV camera in his room with a cloth, slept for two substantial periods — from about 01:16 to 03:32 and again from about 04:07 to 05:43 — and in the morning, at 06:11, used the same cloth to wash the child, a breach of hygiene and infection control. In his observation chart she recorded that she had observed him at 02:00 and made hourly observations from 02:00 to 05:00, knowing this was untrue.

When Child A’s parents reviewed the CCTV footage and raised concerns with her employer, Thornbury Community Services, Tchampet denied she had slept, saying a vaginal infection had forced her to scratch herself and that she had covered the camera for privacy. She maintained for around six weeks — in writing and in formal meetings — that she had performed the hourly checks and used a fresh cloth to wash the child. That account was contradicted by the movement-triggered camera, which showed no movement in the room during the times she claimed to have been performing checks. On 3 February 2020 she admitted for the first time that she had been asleep and that she had covered the camera in order to sleep.

At the NMC panel hearing in March and April 2025 the charges were proved in their entirety because Tchampet admitted them, though she disputed that they amounted to misconduct or impairment. The panel found misconduct but imposed only a nine-month suspension, citing her admissions, testimonials, courses undertaken and an unblemished record since 2019, and treated the dishonesty as “towards, but not at the higher end of the spectrum” and as “a single episode”. The PSA appealed under section 29 of the NHS Reform and Health Care Professions Act 2002, supported by the NMC itself. Mr Justice Griffiths held the panel’s reasoning “incomplete and unsound”: it was not a single instance, since the dishonesty extended over weeks of denial to the employer; her previous assurances had “turned out not to be a reliable indicator” when she returned to community work against her 2017 promise, and the 2019 events were “actual repetition, and escalation”; and the falsification of records had been underweighted. He concluded the only possible decision was striking off, quashed the suspension, and substituted it himself.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case was reported in the regulatory press, including Fitness to Practise News’ account of the High Court overturning the NMC panel, and became a case study in the PSA’s own commentary on its section-29 appeal powers, written by the barrister who argued the appeal. A regulatory-law firm’s analysis framed Tchampet as a warning that sustained dishonesty — above all dishonesty within an investigation — points to erasure, and that insight accepted by a panel can be overturned on appeal. The judgment also records a procedural sideshow: Tchampet’s representative admitted his written submissions had been partly generated by Microsoft’s Copilot and had relied on three legal authorities, two of which did not contain the words he attributed to them; the judge warned him he could face a contempt charge but took no further steps.

The concrete consequences are the striking-off itself and the costs of the appeal, which the court awarded to the PSA on the standard basis. The published record contains no public statement from Tchampet beyond her evidence and submissions reported in the judgment.

Current Status

Tchampet is struck off the NMC register by order of the High Court dated 30 January 2026, which quashed the nine-month suspension imposed the previous April and substituted erasure. The court awarded costs to the PSA on the standard basis. A Capsticks summary of the case records that Mr Justice Griffiths allowed the PSA’s appeal on all grounds and found the panel’s own findings of primary fact supported the “inevitable and correct” decision to strike her off. The published record shows no appeal against the High Court’s decision and no restoration application.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Striking off ends Tchampet’s registration and with it her ability to work as a nurse anywhere in the United Kingdom, in any setting — hospital or community. Because the erasure was imposed by the High Court rather than the regulator’s panel, the path back is narrower still: restoration would run through the NMC, with the judgment’s findings on repetition and dishonesty on the public record. The case has taken on a second life as required reading in regulatory law, cited as the modern example of a section-29 appeal succeeding where a panel’s sanction fell short. The published record contains no information about her circumstances since the order, and nothing on this page should be read as going beyond it.

Sources

*High Court, PSA v NMC and Tchampet [2026] EWHC 141 (Admin), judgment of 30 January 2026 — source
*Regulation Resolution, “PSA v NMC and Tchampet: High Court Replaces Suspension with Striking-Off”, 21 July 2026 — source
*Professional Standards Authority, “The PSA’s Section 29 appeal powers in practice: the case of PSA vs NMC and Tchampet”, 10 March 2026 — source
*Capsticks, “Professional Standards Authority update - a summary of recent developments” — source
*Fitness to Practise News, “High Court overturns NMC panel decision and orders erasure in PSA v NMC & Tchampet”, 15 March 2026 — source