Four mental health nurses have been deregistered after an indigenous patient with a history of self-harm suicided during their night shift at a large Sydney hospital.

The nurses were instructed by a doctor to do observations every 30 minutes, but a coroner later found the patient could have been dead for up to eight hours because they had failed to make the requested checks. 

One of the nurses claimed it was common practice for only hourly checks to be conducted overnight, where nurses would also sign for the half-hourly check that was never done.

The practice, known as “backfilling”, was “entrenched” at the hospital, the nurse said in her to defence to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal.