Nurse who drugged patients for an ‘easy life’ is struck off

A nurse who drugged patients on a hospital stroke unit for an “easy life” has been struck off the nursing register.

Catherine Hudson was jailed for seven years and two months in December 2023 for illegally sedating two patients at Blackpool Victoria Hospital and conspiring with a junior colleague to sedate a third.

Now she has been struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) at a hearing held this week.

Police were alerted by hospital chiefs in November 2018 after a student nurse on a work placement said Hudson suggested administering unprescribed zopiclone, a sleeping pill, to an elderly patient, Preston Crown Court heard during her sentencing. Hudson was found guilty by a jury of three counts of ill-treating patients and she was also convicted of conspiring with her junior colleague to inappropriately sedate another patient.

The nursing misconduct panel found Hudson’s “ill-treatment of vulnerable stroke patients over a prolonged period of time particularly deplorable”, a report published this week said.

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Source: The Independent, 12 January 2025