A Nigerian dietitian has been struck off the United Kingdom health professionals register after a tribunal found she falsely claimed expertise in over a dozen medical specialties to secure a hospital job she was unqualified to perform.\n<\/p>\n
Ifeyinwa Chizube Ndulue-Nonso, a registered dietitian with the Health and Care Professions Council, was removed from the register following a final hearing held between March 2 and 10, 2026, by the HCPC\u2019s Conduct and Competence Committee.\n<\/p>\n
According to findings obtained from the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service website by PUNCH Online on Friday, the panel found that Ndulue-Nonso had, in August and September 2023, made false claims in her application for a Band 6 rotational dietitian position at the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust.\n<\/p>\n
She reportedly falsely claimed knowledge and experience in areas including cancer, neurology, gastroenterology, respiratory medicine, artificial feeding, parenteral nutrition, dysphagia, and several other specialties.<\/p>\n
She began work at the trust on February 19, 2024, having relocated from Nigeria, but supervisors raised concerns within days of her resumption.\n<\/p>\n
According to the panel, her line manager, Curtis Roberts, met her on February 28 and found her description of her work in Nigeria inconsistent with what she had written in her application.\n<\/p>\n
He recorded in a supervision log that she was unable to explain basic conditions including coeliac disease, irritable bowel syndrome and eating disorders.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe wasn\u2019t able to tell me about coeliac disease, eating disorders, cancer, IBS or gastrointestinal disease and surgery. When I asked her about the above, she wasn\u2019t sure on the difference between coeliac, IBS or any GI disease,\u201d Roberts recorded.\n<\/p>\n
He further noted that she told him she had never worked in critical care and had no experience of parenteral nutrition.\n<\/p>\n
Her clinical supervisor, Lorna Haywood, noted that Ndulue-Nonso could not identify which part of the intestine follows the stomach, incorrectly stating it was the large intestine.\n<\/p>\n
The panel stated that Haywood recorded that she \u201ccould not calculate a BMI correctly, she did not know what the signs or symptoms of dysphagia were, she could not tell me the risks of allowing somebody with dysphagia to eat standard diet, she did not know how to dietetically manage refeeding syndrome, she could not interpret biochemistry and she could not interpret symptoms.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
In a separate incident, Haywood took her to a hospital ward and asked her to identify a feeding tube visibly placed in a patient\u2019s nose. Ndulue-Nonso identified it as a breathing tube.\n<\/p>\n
She later told Haywood she was \u201cconfused as she isn\u2019t used to seeing feeding tubes, despite telling me previously she has had a lot of experience with feeding tubes,\u201d according to Haywood\u2019s supervision log entry of March 6. <\/p>\n
The tribunal noted that Roberts observed her googling the term \u201ccerebrovascular accident\u201d during a task before telling him she knew what it was.<\/p>\n
When challenged, she admitted she had looked it up. Roberts recorded that she subsequently acknowledged writing things in her application that she did not know, admitting she lacked understanding of biochemistry and pharmacology and had only a basic grasp of human anatomy.\n<\/p>\n
During cross-examination at the hearing, Ndulue-Nonso was asked what the gallbladder does. She replied that it was part of the kidney, where urine is stored.\n<\/p>\n
The tribunal found that her dishonesty was premeditated and sustained, noting that she had misrepresented her abilities at the application stage, maintained that misrepresentation at interview and continued to claim knowledge she did not have after resuming work until directly challenged.\n<\/p>\n
The panel rejected her claim that she had merely overstated her experience \u201ca bit,\u201d saying it \u201cdid not accept that the Registrant did not intend to mislead, when as she says, she was viewing matters through a Nigerian perspective, because she has admitted or been found to have no knowledge or experience in many of the areas that she said she was a specialist in.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cShe wrote that she had in-depth knowledge and skills. She intended to give a misleading impression of her skills and abilities with a view to obtaining a role which required a high level of knowledge and skill,\u201d the panel stated.\n<\/p>\n
The tribunal further found that no patient harm had occurred only because supervisors took the precaution of not permitting her to be patient-facing.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cGiving a patient who is nil by mouth oral nutrition carries the risk of aspiration pneumonia, which can be life threatening,\u201d the panel stated. It added that Haywood\u2019s concern was that Ndulue-Nonso \u201cwould attempt a dietetic assessment and implement a plan that would cause serious harm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ruling out lesser sanctions, the panel said conditions of practice would be inappropriate given the attitudinal nature of her misconduct, her lack of insight and the wide-ranging deficiencies identified.\n<\/p>\n
A suspension order, it held, would be \u201cwholly inadequate to protect the public interest, maintain confidence in the profession, and uphold proper professional standards.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The panel concluded that her \u201cdeliberate and persistent dishonesty constitutes a serious breach of professional standards and fundamentally undermines the trust that the public is entitled to place in the profession,\u201d and that a striking-off order was the only proportionate sanction.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Registrant\u2019s misconduct was so serious as to be incompatible with her remaining on the register,\u201d the panel said.\n<\/p>\n
An interim suspension order of 18 months was also imposed to cover the 28-day appeal period, or until any appeal is determined.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Nigerian dietitian has been struck off the United Kingdom health professionals register after a tribunal found she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":839716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4316],"tags":[28748,240320,240321,105,4348,240322,240323,211,8200,240324,16,240325,15],"class_list":["post-839715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-dietitian","tag-disciplinary-hearing","tag-hcpc","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-ifeyinwa-chizube-ndulue-nonso","tag-job-application-fraud","tag-nhs","tag-patient-safety","tag-professional-misconduct","tag-uk","tag-uk-register","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116264762799406069","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}