Susan Parkinson

Introduction

Susan Parkinson is a former registered nurse who worked at Moorside Nursing Home in Lancaster and who has been struck off the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register after a hearing found that she double-dosed a care home resident and then falsified the medication record in a way designed to make it look as though a colleague had made the mistake. The NMC hearing, which concluded in April 2025, proved all of the allegations against her — made out in her absence — and imposed the profession’s most serious sanction.

Background Information

Parkinson was a nurse at Moorside Nursing Home in Lancaster, a care home whose residents depend on nursing staff to administer prescribed medication safely and to keep accurate medication administration records. The events that ended her career took place in 2021, when she incorrectly gave a resident two doses of Lansoprazole, a medication used to control stomach acid.

What turned a medication error into a fitness-to-practise case was what happened next. Rather than reporting the mistake, Parkinson incorrectly filled in the medical administration chart — first entering the record for the following day, and then in a way that created the impression that a colleague had made the drug error when they had not. The falsification converted a clinical mistake into a dishonesty case, the category of finding regulators treat most gravely.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated vs. alleged. The findings described here were made by an NMC hearing panel on the civil standard of proof. Striking off is a regulatory sanction, not a criminal conviction, and no criminal proceedings are reported in the source.

At the NMC hearing, all of the allegations were proved in Parkinson’s absence. The panel found that she had incorrectly administered two doses of Lansoprazole to a resident in 2021, that she had then incorrectly completed the medication administration chart for the next day, and that she had altered the record to create the impression that a colleague — who had made no such error — was responsible for the mistake.

In a statement from 2021, Parkinson said she had altered the initials to protect a junior member of staff, but the panel did not believe that explanation, finding that it made “no sense”. In an email she also wrote: “I was honest and made a mistake in a toxic workplace where worse mistakes had been mafe [sic] and hidden.” The panel was unpersuaded by the framing: its findings distinguished sharply between the underlying error and the response to it.

The panel was of the view that Parkinson’s actions fell significantly short of the standards expected of a registered nurse, and although the medication and date errors were deemed “minor mistakes”, it found that her subsequent “calculated” dishonesty amounted to serious misconduct. Members said they found her reflective document “a less than impressive reflection of the incident”, which blamed others and was factually incorrect. They decided that her misconduct had brought the nursing profession into disrepute and were not persuaded that it would not happen again, given their concerns about the reflective document and her non-attendance.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The consequence was the loss of her registration. The NMC struck Parkinson off the register following the hearing, which concluded earlier in the month before the Lancashire Evening Post’s report of 18 April 2025. Because the hearing went ahead in her absence, the sanction was imposed without her participation, and the report records no mitigation that diverted the panel from the most serious outcome.

Striking off removes a nurse from the NMC register, which means they are no longer lawfully able to work as a registered nurse in the UK, and the finding of calculated dishonesty carries particular weight: dishonesty findings are the findings most likely to make restoration difficult, because employers and regulators treat falsification of safety records as incompatible with professional registration. The case also carried a reputational dimension for the workplace involved, since the record showed a nurse attempting to shift blame onto an innocent colleague rather than reporting a medication error.

Current Status

Parkinson stands struck off the NMC register. The sanction dates from the NMC hearing that concluded in April 2025, and the Lancashire Evening Post’s report — the public record of the case — notes that all allegations were proved at the hearing in her absence. No appeal or restoration application is reported in the source, and the NMC’s published outcome remains the authoritative record of her status.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The striking-off ends Parkinson’s nursing registration and with it her ability to work as a nurse in the United Kingdom. The findings that ended her career were not the Lansoprazole double-dose itself — which the panel characterised as a minor mistake — but the falsified medication chart and the attempted framing of a colleague, conduct the panel described as calculated dishonesty amounting to serious misconduct. Her own contemporaneous explanation, that she had acted to protect a junior colleague in a “toxic workplace”, was rejected by the panel as making no sense, leaving the public record of her case one of an error concealed and blame misdirected.

Sources

• Lancashire Evening Post, “Lancaster care home nurse struck off by NMC after giving unprescribed medication and trying to frame colleague”, 18 April 2025. source