A nurse who walked out on sick babies at Dewsbury and District Hospital to go and babysit for her cousin has been struck off by the regulator.

Ruth Baker, a sister at the neonatal unit, was suspended earlier this year after she was found guilty of abandoning her post, leaving critically ill newborns uncared for and labelling a baby with the wrong name tag.

Now the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has struck her from its register - barring her from working as a nurse or midwife in the UK for five years.

The NMC hearing last March heard she had failed to tell anyone that she would be leaving early when she walked out on colleagues one hour and 20 minutes before her shift was due to end.

Ms Baker, who was in charge of the night shift on April 18-19, 2010 also left a vulnerable 27-week-old baby unsupported and failed to administer vital drugs to another baby.

The hearing was told she had tried to book the shift off as holiday, but it had been denied.

She arranged cover for herself from 6am, but her plan was scuppered when the back-up nurse rang in sick.

But at 6.10am she left anyway, pleading with one senior doctor to “not leave the unit until the day staff arrive”.

One of the nurses left behind admitted to the committee that she had not been trained in how to use a ventilator that one of the sick tots was hooked up to.

Despite the serious incident she remained working at the hospital.

But two further incidents then occurred in February 2011 and March 2012.

The hearing was told she had failed to do the paperwork over her involvement in the treatment and resuscitation attempts of a baby that had died.

She was also accused of confusing one baby for another and failing to record one child’s time of birth.

The NMC said Ms Baker had failed to accept the seriousness of her failings after she sent them a letter saying: “clearly I pose no harm to vulnerable people or to patients”.

The panel said it had come to the “contrary view” in the face of Ms Baker’s “persistent absence of insight and a deterioration of attitude”.

Ms Baker is no longer employed by the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust and is working as a care assistant, a role which is not regulated.

She can re-apply to the nursing register in five years but may have to complete re-training.