A NURSE has been struck off after repeatedly making ‘basic errors’ on her ward, some of which were potentially life-threatening.

Sarah Woodrup’s colleagues at the Royal Blackburn Hospital began noticing her failings soon after she started working on an acute respiratory ward [C6] in February last year, a misconduct panel heard.

Despite being demoted and offered support, her bosses felt there was no improvement and several incidents were reported to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

The allegations included failing to record a patient’s temperature, which meant they were given an incorrect Early Warning Score [EWS] of three – instead of five, indicating their illness was more serious and needed critical care. A senior colleague was forced to intervene.

Miss Woodrup denied five charges of misconduct, but the panel in London found against her on all counts.

The other charges included several record keeping and medication errors, as well as an incident where she failed to wash her hands, and another where she attempted to give medication to the wrong patient.

When bosses became concerned Miss Woodrup was ‘invited to limit her practice to basic nursing duties’ and later downgraded to third year student nurse status.

She then resigned last July, and asked to be removed from the NMC register due to her personal circumstances and to avoid ‘further stress’, the panel heard. She also reported having some health problems to the panel.

The panel findings said: “Miss Woodrup has had limited engagement with these NMC proceedings and despite the panel acknowledging that there might have been factors that could have impacted on Miss Woodrup’s practice, it could not be satisfied that she has developed any understanding of the consequences of her conduct.

“The panel is not satisfied that Miss Woodrup has developed sufficient insight or remedied her failings.

“The panel considered Ms Woodrup’s failings were wide-ranging and that some of them were potentially life-threatening, had she worked unsupervised.”