A nurse who mistakenly gave a premature baby a day's worth of morphine in 11 minutes has been ordered to undergo supervision and been banned from working with children for a year.

Eva Serenio, 49, was issued with conditions of practice, to be reviewed in a year's time, at a central London disciplinary hearing of the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

The conditions include a ban from working in neonatal care or paediatrics for a year and supervision at work including addressing her "deficiency" in the administration and checking of drugs. She had admitted failing to perform an adequate checking procedure after she mistakenly administered morphine solution at Bradford Royal Infirmary to a baby, named as Baby A, on September 20, 2004. The baby later died, but a coroner ruled the morphine dose did not cause the death and he died from natural causes.

Philippines-trained Miss Serenio also admitted a second charge of failing to perform an adequate checking procedure on January 30, 2005, when handing over discharge medication of eye drops and folic acid to the family of a baby named as Baby B.

Giving her ruling yesterday, Kathleen McLean, chairman of the conduct and competence committee, said: "These are serious charges, one of these incidents involved the maladministration of a controlled drug which could have had very serious consequences.

"The panel fully acknowledges that in respect of both charges serious system failures and errors by colleagues contributed to your own errors, however, as a registered nurse accountable for administering these drugs you failed to carry out proper checking procedures and failed to safeguard your patients."

The committee had earlier heard Miss Serenio had been given a written warning and been temporarily suspended by Bradford Hospitals Trust after the morphine overdoes was discovered.

She was sacked by the Trust in March, 2005, after her second error in relation to Baby B was discovered.

e-mail: newsdesk@bradford.newsdesk.co.uk