A bungling Midland nurse allowed a baby girl to choke to death while in her care. Last week, Joyce Aburime was struck off the nursing register after being found guilty of FIVE professional misconduct charges. A Nursing and Midwifery Council hearing was told how the agency worker stood wailing 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry' as 11-month old Elizabeth Dixon died in her arms. Aburime, 39, was so incompetent that it was left to the infant's desperate mother to try to resuscitate her tiny daughter - but tragically it was already too late to save her. Now, Elizabeth's parents could launch a lawsuit against the giant private healthcare provider which supplied Aburime. On Friday, the nurse refused to speak to the Sunday Mercury when we contacted her at her home in Wyken, Coventry. She had deliberately stayed away from the hearing, which took place last week in central London. In Aburime's absence, a disciplinary panel was told question marks had been raised about her conduct by Elizabeth's parents almost as soon as they had hired her. Anne and Graeme Dixon, from Church Crookham in Hampshire, had faced a living nightmare after their daughter was born two months prematurely in January 2001. Tragically, Elizabeth was suffering from abdominal cancer, high blood pressure and breathing problems - leaving her needing round-the-clock care. But despite her condition, doctors believed Elizabeth could still survive into adulthood. After intensive treatment, she was allowed home from a children's hospice in November 2001 with a detailed care plan. Mrs Dixon, 41, turned to one of the UK's biggest healthcare providers, Nestor Primecare, who sent Aburime to help. Yet within hours of her arrival on December 3, Mrs Dixon realised something was wrong. She described how Aburime seemed completely clueless about how to deal with the specialist equipment designed to keep her daughter alive. Amazingly, Aburime was seen doing a crossword during a training session focused on baby Elizabeth's needs. The nurse had no idea how to set up a nebuliser, a device which sprays a mist of medicine into a mask ready for the baby to inhale. She also did not know how to maintain the infant's tracheostomy - the tube into the baby's neck allowing her to breathe. Aburime even came perilously close to poisoning Elizabeth by trying to clean out the baby's feeding tube with potentially toxic salt solution, but Mrs Dixon stopped her just in time. "I flushed it out myself," Mrs Dixon said. "By that time I think I had just about had enough." Mrs Dixon complained to Nestor Primecare but the company told her Aburime was 'one of the best [nurses] we could have sent'. Later that night, those words came back to haunt them. The Dixons were woken by the sound of Aburime screaming and Mrs Dixon found the nurse on the landing cradling her lifeless daughter in her arms. "Her arms and legs were limp," Mrs Dixon said. "She looked like she had died. I immediately took her and put her back on her oxygen downstairs. "She [Aburime] stood in the hall going 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh my God!' "I didn't know how to resuscitate. I just tried to blow into her tube. It was just chaos. "It was completely not what it should have been. It was an uncontrolled mess. Her death was stolen from us. It should have been peaceful." Last night, a top clinical negligence lawyer said the Dixons could be in line for a £10,000 compensation payout if they took legal action against Nestor Primecare. Nick Tubb, of Challinors Lyon & Clark, said: "If they take action and can prove a link between the nurse's conduct and their child's death, they could win a civil action." The Aburime case is not the first time that Nestor Primecare, which made a £52.9 million loss last year, has courted controversy. Last August, its out-of-hours patients' service was heavily criticised by a Yorkshire coroner for failing to order ambulances for people who later died. And in September, a company prison nurse was sacked for having an affair with a burglar. Last night, a Nestor Primecare spokeswoman admitted the company had been forced to look again at its training procedures. But amazingly, she revealed Aburime had been able to KEEP her job - despite her involvement in the tragedy. She said: "Following the incident in question, Nurse Aburime underwent and satisfactorily completed a period of retraining. "She remained an employee of Primecare Managed Healthcare [a division of Nestor Primecare] until the summer of the following year. "PMH conducted an immediate internal investigation following the incident where the package of care delivered was fully reviewed. "As a result a number of processes were strengthened and changes were promptly introduced. "PMH always sought to provide care of high quality to meet the needs of the Dixon's daughter and to allow her to remain at home. We again offer our condolences to Mr and Mrs Dixon who have suffered the tragic loss of their daughter." | 
