Hucknall inquest: NHS team leader denies ‘no induction’ claim from worker who neglected patient before death
A nurse has denied claims from a mental health worker that she received no induction when she began her role before a patient died not long after she was meant to have observed her.
Louise Furlong, who was a resident at Heathcotes Moorgreen Care Home in Hucknall when she wasn’t in hospital, was found unresponsive in her bathroom at Highbury Hospital in Highbury Vale on September 11, 2022.
Healthcare assistant Sylwia Quaye-Mensah, of Monsall Avenue, Ilkeston, who was responsible for Louise’s observations in the hour before she was discovered, pleaded guilty to neglect in relation to the death at Nottingham Crown Court on November 18, 2025.
At the inquest, before a jury at Nottingham Coroners Court, Ms Quaye-Mensah said she had not received an induction when she first began working shifts at Highbury in the months before Louise’s death.
But nurse Ella Harrison, a clinical team leader at the hospital, told the coroner that she recalled giving the induction to Ms Quaye-Mensah for the Redwood 1 ward, a male-only ward.
Ms Quaye-Mensah denied ever having heard Ms Harrison’s name.
But Ms Harrison said: “I can recall giving her the induction.
"I don’t recall specifically saying to her ‘this is the induction for Redwood 1,’ but it would’ve been all the parts for the induction.”
Ms Quaye-Mensah was employed with the Athona agency, which Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, used to fill rotas when there was a lack of permanent staff.
She had first worked at Highbury a few months before Louise’s death, in the summer of 2022, ‘initially on the Cherry ward, for over-65s, and on Redwood 1’, she told the inquest.
While Miss Furlong was on Rowan 2, a female-only ward, Ms Harrison said that the inductions were the same for every ward, with only the layouts changing.
The induction involved giving Ms Quaye-Mensah a set of keys and an alarm, orientating her to the ward, showing her where to find an emergency bag with a defibrillator in the clinic room and the fire procedure.
It then involved showing the member of staff how break times worked, how allocations to observation shifts worked and how computer tablets, used to record observations, worked.
Despite being on Redwood 1, the induction would have been ‘sufficient’ for Ms Quaye-Mensah to work on Rowan 2, it was heard.
Ms Quaye-Mensah said she had only been shown the tablet at the start of her first shift on the Cherry ward, where she said the only other things she was shown was the location of the toilet and the emergency exit.
She also denied having seen a patient observation policy document, which Ms Harrison said was part of a student handbook which Ms Quaye-Mensah would have been told she could find information within if she was unsure.
Ms Harrison also confirmed she agreed with the notion that the computer tablets used to log observation records were ‘foolproof’ and ‘idiot proof’ – evidence the inquest had earlier heard.
Earlier in the inquest, CCTV footage showed Ms Quaye-Mensah sitting in the communal area of the ward when the computer tablet records said that she had checked on Louise.
The inquest continues.