Asha Bitita
Introduction
Asha Bitita is a UK adult nurse who was suspended from the nursing register for twelve months on 1 April 2026, after a Nursing and Midwifery Council Fitness to Practise Committee found she dishonestly told her employer she had called 999 after finding a resident unresponsive — when the call log showed the only call made that night was to 111, and no evidence of any 999 call existed .
Background Information
Bitita worked at Stowford House Care Home in Oxfordshire. On 31 March 2022 she found Resident A unresponsive. Around 5 April 2022, she told her employer she had called 999 that night. The charges the panel found proved were that she made that statement when she had not called 999, and that her actions were dishonest — that she sought to create the impression an emergency call had been made when she knew it had not. The call log showed a call to 111 and no evidence of a 999 call .
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Adjudicated (regulatory). The findings are the NMC panel’s conclusions on the civil standard.
Both charges were found proved on the balance of probabilities, on the call log and witness evidence: no 999 call was made, and Bitita knew that when she said otherwise. The panel found the dishonesty breached her professional duty of candour and amounted to misconduct. The emergency-call distinction is the substance of the case: 999 dispatches an emergency ambulance; 111 is the non-emergency advice line. Telling an employer that 999 was called for an unresponsive resident — days after the shift, when the records showed 111 — was a claim about the standard of her own response to a medical emergency, which is what made it a candour case rather than a slip of memory .
On impairment, the panel found it on public-interest grounds only, citing insufficient insight into the impact of her dishonesty on public confidence in the profession. The aggravating factors it recorded: the dishonesty also breached the duty of candour; there was personal gain, in that the lie was a way of avoiding the consequences of her actions, namely potential dismissal from her employment; and her insight remained insufficient. Mitigating factors: her previous good character and the one-off character of the incident. The panel imposed a 12-month suspension order with a review, and decided the high threshold for an interim order was not met .
Public Reaction and Consequences
The consequence is the twelve-month suspension and a register record that permanently documents the false emergency-call claim about a resident who could not report it himself. The case is recorded in MedicWatch’s listing of nurses suspended in 2026 .
No employer statement or public comment from Bitita appears in the fetched record beyond the determination. Nor does the record state what became of Resident A that night beyond the unresponsiveness finding — the case before the panel was the false claim about the emergency call, not the clinical outcome, and the page’s findings stop at the dishonesty .
Current Status
Bitita is a suspended nurse under a twelve-month order imposed on 1 April 2026, with a review before it expires. The dishonesty finding and the candour breach are permanent register entries. The panel’s insufficient-insight finding is the operative fact for the review: what it will look for is the understanding of why a false 999 claim about an unresponsive resident is not a private mistake but a claim against the record of an emergency response .
Impact on Their Career/Life
Care-home nursing runs on records that outlive the shift — call logs, observation charts, handover notes — and the 999 claim was disprovable by the simplest of them. The panel’s findings describe a nurse who responded to a resident’s collapse, made the non-emergency call, and later upgraded it in her employer’s hearing to an emergency one. The panel stopped short of any public-protection impairment and credited her good character, but the personal-gain finding — that the lie existed to dodge dismissal — is what fixed the case in the candour category. Twelve months suspended, with the false claim a permanent part of her register entry, is the cost of the version of events that did not survive the call log .