Once a high-profile healthcare leader, Ishbel Straker says she became the target of a campaign to destroy her reputation – and now she is fighting back
Ishbel Straker says she has been targeted and victimised by the nursing regulator
A consultant nurse has accused the profession’s regulator of pursuing a “vindictive and malicious” campaign against her after she raised concerns about how cases are handled amid growing alarm over suicides among health professionals.
Ishbel Straker, a highly experienced psychiatric nurse from Southport who runs a private addiction and mental health practice in Liverpool, is currently suspended by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). She says she has spent five years trapped in a regulatory process marked by delay, uncertainty and what she believes is retaliation for speaking out.
The 42-year-old previously held senior roles in the NHS and other organisations before establishing her own practice. In 2020, she blew the whistle on another healthcare provider she had been working with, raising concerns about how the organisation was operating.
She says that shortly afterwards, the provider submitted a complaint about her to the NMC. She said: “It was so clearly vexatious because I had blown the whistle on them. I thought the NMC would understand that but they didn’t and said they were going to take me to a hearing.”
Five years on, that hearing has still not taken place. Ms Straker has now been told it cannot be scheduled until December 2026, the ECHO reports.
She added: “It’s like a terminal diagnosis. You learn to live with it, but it is awful because you keep thinking, did I do anything wrong?”
While that case remained unresolved, Ms Straker was referred to the NMC again in 2022 following a complaint from a former client, who she says behaved aggressively towards her staff. She said: “We went through the right processes and referred them back to their GP.
“None of it was true and we could evidence that straight away and yet that one still hangs over us from 2022. The NMC haven’t even allocated a hearing.”
Ishbel Straker says she has been targeted and victimised by the nursing regulator
Campaigners and MPs say that these long and painful waits for what are called Fitness to Practice hearings for nurses and midwives who have been referred to the NMC are part of a concerning wider picture. Campaign group NMC Watch alleges that 33 nurses have died by suicide before their cases have completed.
The NMC says it does not recognise this number, but believes that there have been 17 deaths by suicide of people in its Fitness to Practice processes since figures started being reported in 2018. The regulator pointed out that this does not mean people died because of this process as this decision is for a coroner to make and it is unaware of any findings that a person died because of its processes.
For Ishbel, an already stressful and worrying situation took a shocking further turn in 2024 when she was dealing with problematic staff members at her practice in Liverpool. Having let a staff member go through a HR process, she says they referred her to the NMC and her business to the Care Quality Commission, the regulator for health and social care organisations.
She explained: “They had accused me of signing blank prescriptions and letting admin staff fill them out. We were able to evidence that this had never ever happened. She had taken photos of prescriptions that didn’t even show what she was claiming.”
Within two weeks, Ishbel was summoned to a Fitness to Practice hearing, she said she was confident in the result before the hearing was adjourned and her barrister told her he felt there was a “target” on her back. She added: “He said the way they were talking about me was concerning.”
At this point she stopped prescribing medication and employed other clinicians to do this in order to protect her business. She also wrote an open letter to the NMC, which questioned the regulator’s processes, calling them unjust and unfair.
Shortly after she faced the full hearing and was told that evening that she had been suspended as a nurse.
She recalls: “It was so traumatic, I can’t actually go back to the place where I was sitting when I heard that news. It was like an out of body experience.
“Sucking it up and going through the doors of my office the next day was very, very difficult. I didn’t know how I was going to face my staff. They were really supportive when I told them what had happened.”
The suspension was a major problem for Ishbel and her clients. She had clinical responsibility for 2,000 patients in her service at the time. She added: “I remember thinking, surely they won’t suspend me without evidence because they could harm all these people in my service.”
At this point, Ishbel’s suspicions were rising. She was contacted by a university she had worked with telling her to take any references to the the institution down from her website, claiming she had never worked for them.
She also says that on the day after she was suspended, she received a Google Review on on her website, with detailed comments about her hearing, details she said anyone outside of the hearing would have not possibly known.
She added: “This was all a bit frightening. The person who wrote it could not have known this stuff unless someone had told her. None of it had been made public.”
And it is not just the NMC she has been facing problems with. Following the complaints by the ex-staff member, the Care Quality Commission carried out a surprise inspection and gave her practice in Liverpool a statutory warning notice. Ishbel believes the two regulators were “colluding” with one another to damage her reputation.
She said: “I have since carried out subject access requests and found that the NMC were having communications with the CQC that were very negative about me. At one point the CQC were even suggesting I was engaged in criminal activity.”
She added: “The CQC, because of the powers they have, they have tried to intimidate me. It has had a big impact, I have lost major contracts, been unable to tender for others. I know it has had an impact on people wanting to use our service.”
The CQQ did not comment on this specific case but pointed to a joint working protocol between itself and the NMC, which means they routinely share information as part of planned activity and as part of monitoring processes.
Ishbel believes she is being deliberately targeted because she spoke out publicly against the regulator. She says she is so appalled by these experiences – and the experiences of others – that she is now dedicating herself to campaigning for changes.
She said: “There is a new purpose of being, I am emotionally invested in this. Hundreds of people have been in touch with me, dentists, doctors, psychologists, pharmacists, saying this is what has happened to me, please help us, can we join your campaign.
“Lives are being destroyed all over the place. These professions define who we are. There are people saying they can’t carry on living while waiting for these hearings.”
In order to pursue the campaign, however, Ishbel has made a decision. She said: “I made a decision a year ago, irrespective of what happens that I will never work as a nurse again. That has freed me up to probe and ask questions and they can’t hold that over me.”
“I think this scandal is the size of the Post Office scandal. This is what we are living through.”
Ishbel Straker says she has been targeted and victimised by the nursing regulator
Ishbel is being supported in her work by campaign group NMC Watch, which works to protect and help nurses, midwives and other health professionals facing Fitness to Practice investigations.
Founder Cathryn Watters said: “People are taking two to five years to go through the process, by which time, if they’ve been lucky enough to continue in work, they’ve got past whatever went wrong and demonstrated that they are fit. Or they’ve been put into a process for something quite minor but then have been unable to gain any employment during that time, so by the time their case comes to be heard they are unfit to practise, but the process has made them unfit.”
Ishbel is also being supported by Clare Fletcher, partner at Broudie Jackson Canter. She said: “When Ishbel first came to me she was an absolute shell. She knew she had to find something to keep going and I have been privileged and proud to help her to take some of those steps on her journey.
“What is happening with the NMC is utterly unacceptable, they are acting in a way that is at odds with every professional standard we have in terms of how these proceedings should take place. Disclosure is late, timetables aren’t met, hearings are messed about.
“These are people whose entire lives are on hold. They are facing major emotional and financial tolls.
Ms Fletcher pointed to a review of the NMC’s performance from the Professional Standards Authority published earlier this year, which found weaknesses in multiple areas meant the regulator had not met nine of 18 standards. This included Fitness to Practice timelines, where it says there remains a significant backlog, with cases taking too long to practice. The NMC has not met this particular standard since 2018/19.
Ms Fletcher added: “So from 2018 they have known this is a problem, how is this ok? Who is holding the NMC to account?”
An NMC spokesperson said: “It wouldn’t be appropriate to discuss an individual case but we’re here to protect the public and this includes investigating concerns that are raised with us about professionals on the register.
“We have acknowledged that people have been waiting too long for decisions in our Fitness to Practise process, and we are sorry about that. We’ve made a substantial investment in an improvement plan, and this year we have been making record numbers of decisions and resolving a greater proportion of cases within our target of 15 months.”We have also improved our approach to safeguarding, including launching a Safeguarding Hub – over the past year this has pre-screened over 5,000 new referrals to our fitness to practise process, and has taken on more than 1,200 of those for a full review to ensure the right steps are taken to keep people from harm.”
As part of her campaign, Ishbel is now calling for the landmark Hillsborough Law, the legislation campaigned for by Hillsborough families that is currently making its way through parliament, to include statutory protections for healthcare whistle-blowers. The proposed amendment would make it illegal for public bodies and regulators to pursue retaliatory action against those who speak up in the public interest.
She added: “The Hillsborough Law was a result of a culture of cover-up and institutional defensiveness. But a duty of candour means nothing if the people brave enough to tell the truth are crushed by the very institutions meant to protect the public. I am speaking up to protect vulnerable patients. I should have been thanked, not destroyed.”
She is being supported by numerous MPs including Liverpool members Ian Byrne and Kim Johnson. Ms Johnson said: “The Hillsborough Law must include robust protections for whistle-blowers – and Ishbel Straker’s case shows us exactly why this cannot be compromised on.
“We cannot have a Hillsborough Law that protects the establishment whilst leaving whistle-blowers vulnerable to the very retaliation the law is meant to prevent.”
To help with her campaign, she is urging healthcare professionals to come forward and share their stories for a call to evidence, details of which can be found here.
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