Rosemary Keeley

Introduction

Rosemary Anne Keeley is a registered adult nurse from Surrey who was struck off the Nursing and Midwifery Council register after a fitness to practise panel found she lacked the skills to care for a tube-fed child but gave medication through the tube anyway, then asked the child’s mother for the Wi-Fi password during a night shift saying she might fall asleep without anything to watch. The panel, sitting on October 26 and 27, 2026, proved seven charges of misconduct and imposed a striking-off order, the profession’s most severe sanction.

Background Information

Keeley was a registered nurse on the adult nursing part of the NMC register, working through the private agency Advantage Healthcare, where she began substantive employment on February 16, 2023. On a “Clinical Experience and Skills” form dated January 16, 2023 she ticked to say she was competent with nasogastric tubes, and a “Client Nurse Check Form” dated February 17, 2023 recorded her as “confident in caring for nasogastric tubes”. The patient involved — Patient A — was a child with a nasogastric tube used for daytime feeding whose support plan required placement checks and pH testing before anything was administered, because a migrated tube can carry medication into the lung and cause pneumonia or death.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Struck off by the nursing regulator. An NMC panel found Keeley’s fitness to practise impaired by misconduct over failed tube-feeding safety checks and inappropriate conduct during a one-to-one night shift with a child patient, and imposed a striking-off order.

On February 17, 2023 Keeley failed to inform her colleague that she did not have the skills or knowledge to care for patients with nasogastric tubes — a charge the panel proved after reading her signed competence forms and her admission in an investigation meeting that she remembered stating she was competent. The child’s mother asked her at the start of a March 13, 2023 night shift to demonstrate how to test the tube; the panel found Keeley was unable to demonstrate it and unable to answer questions about pH, and the mother showed her how. That same shift, on a one-to-one basis with no other staff present, Keeley administered medication through the tube without testing the pH or confirming the tube’s placement. She called a senior nurse the next morning and admitted she had administered the medication without testing the tube; the panel heard there was no patient harm from the incident. The panel also proved that on the same shift Keeley asked the child’s mother for the Wi-Fi password, said she might fall asleep if she had nothing to watch, and was found watching a film on her iPad when the mother checked on the child around 2 a.m. In interview responses she said that during night shifts she “needs to have something to keep her awake,” and later maintained she would not have fallen asleep on duty and had apologised to the mother. The NMC referred her on July 3, 2023 after Advantage Healthcare’s paediatric head of nursing reported the incidents.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The panel concluded Keeley’s actions fell far below the standards expected of a registered nurse, that failing to disclose her lack of competence and then medicating through the tube without checks placed the patient at real risk of harm, and that her conduct brought the profession into disrepute by adversely affecting the public’s view of how a nurse should conduct themselves. It found that in the absence of any evidence of insight, training or attempts to strengthen her practice there was a risk of repetition and consequent risk of harm, making a finding of impairment necessary on public protection grounds. The NMC’s sanction bid was a striking-off order, and the panel, guided by the regulator’s “Sanctions for the highest risk cases” guidance, concluded that “nothing short of this would be sufficient”.

Current Status

Keeley was struck off by decision dated October 27, 2026, following a meeting she did not attend despite notice being sent to her registered email address in early September 2026. Because a striking-off order cannot take effect until the 28-day appeal period ends, the panel imposed an interim suspension order of 18 months to protect the public in the interim; if no appeal is made, the striking-off order replaces it.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The striking-off order removes Keeley from the register permanently unless a successful appeal overturns it, ending her ability to work as a registered nurse anywhere the NMC register governs. The determination records the collapse of her agency employment after the March 2023 shift, with Advantage Healthcare conducting a local investigation in May 2023 that triggered the regulatory case. The panel’s finding that she denied nothing about her competence claims but could not evidence insight or remediation forecloses the ordinary route back to practice through supervised retraining.

Sources

• “Nursing and Midwifery Council Fitness to Practise Committee: Rosemary Anne Keeley, Substantive Meeting 26 and 27 October 2026” source