A NURSE who made a series of medication blunders at two nursing homes in Burnley and Pendle has been struck off by a watchdog.

Elizabeth Gallagher’s actions put a number of patients at risk of ‘unw-arranted harm’, a Nursing and Midwifery Council fitness to practice panel has ruled.

Gallagher was also found to be dishonest when she was dismissed from one home and secured employment at a second, without disclosing the earlier sacking.

Her first set of offences related to her employment at Andrew Smith House, in Nelson, during June 2011, where she confessed to not administering medication to two patients.

One further allegation, found proved, was that she failed to ensure a patient’s notes were sent with her during a hospital admission - and failed to inform her family she had been hospitalised.

The omissions were discovered by bosses at the Nelson home, after a drugs audit and other checks, and Gallagher was dismissed, the NMC heard.

But she then applied to join Dove Court care home, in Burnley, run by BUPA, and did not reveal details of her employ-ment at Andrew Smith House.

Aja Hall, for the NMC, said Gallagher had failed to demonstrate any rem-orse, or insight into her failings, and had a tend-ency to blame colleagues for her actions.

Panel chairman Barbara Stuart said that the nurse’s actions were liab- le to bring the profession into disrepute.

Striking her name off the nursing register, she said: “This was not a single incident, rather the panel determined that Ms Gallagher’s conduct demonstrates a pattern of behaviour, which occurred in two separate nursing homes, and involved a number of residents under her care.

“In the light of Ms Gall-agher’s lack of insight, and in the absence of any evidence of suffic-ient, or relevant remed-iation on her part, the panel determined that there is a real risk of repetition of her misconduct.”

Gallagher was cleared of two medication off-ences as a result of the hearing.