A BUNGLING nurse has been struck off by a disciplinary committee. Brenda Twyman, 52, of Northwood Road, Whitstable, ordered a patient's eyes to be dilated with drops at Kent and Canterbury Hospital, causing serious complications that required emergency treatment.

She was demoted but then gave the wrong medication to a woman patient and altered her chart to cover her tracks. The Nursing and Midwifery Council professional conduct committee heard Mrs Twyman initially claimed to know nothing of the first incident, which happened in November 1998. But she confessed at an internal inquiry and was warned, downgraded, and sent to an old people's ward under supervision.

It was while there, in June 1999, that Mrs Twyman administered the drug Vitrimix incorrectly to a female patient, now deceased, then altered the fluid balance chart to cover herself.

She admitted stamping the first patient's notes without medical authority on November 4, 1998; administering Vitrimix to the second patient under the skin instead of into a vein, and that she administered the drug before a competency assessment. She denied altering the chart but was found guilty by the committee and accepted it amounted to misconduct.

Mrs Twyman told the hearing in central London that she was now working at an adult day care unit in Maidstone. She confessed that she had not told her new employers about the allegations against her. "This is the only career I've known and the only thing I've wanted to do," she said.

She blamed domestic problems and said her husband had left, her daughter had become pregnant and her father had died suddenly. But committee chairman Mrs Eileen Walker said: "A nurse must be accountable for her actions. After one mistake you were given plenty of support but despite this a further mistake occurred and this was compounded by falsification."