Nursing and Midwifery Council determination — substantive hearing
Struck off the register
The regulator’s term: erasure
What does “struck off the register” mean?
Being struck off (the regulator calls this "erasure") removes the practitioner from the register. They are no longer permitted to practise this profession in the UK. Erasure can be reviewed after a minimum of five years, but is otherwise indefinite.
Concerning Helen McLaughlan, nurse (Nursing and Midwifery Council 19B1394E).
Decision date: 4 February 2026 · Hearing started 14 July 2025 and ended 4 February 2026
In plain English
The NMC's Fitness to Practise Committee found that Helen McLaughlan, a nurse at Wexham Park Hospital, dispensed medication from the hospital's automated system on numerous occasions without clinical justification between November 2020 and April 2021, taking it for personal use. The panel found this conduct dishonest and fundamentally incompatible with remaining on the register, and imposed a striking-off order.
Charges
Helen McLaughlan, while working as a band 5 nurse at Wexham Park Hospital, was charged with dispensing medication from the Omnicell system without clinical justification on multiple occasions between November 2020 and April 2021, taking the medication for a purpose other than for which it was intended, and acting dishonestly in doing so knowing the medication was Trust property entrusted to her for patient use only.
Findings
The panel found proved that Helen McLaughlan dispensed medication on numerous occasions without clinical justification, took the medication for personal use, and that her actions were dishonest. Charge 1s)ii (dispensing pregabalin without a second checker) was admitted. The panel found misconduct and that fitness to practise was impaired on public protection and public interest grounds. A striking-off order was imposed on the grounds that the conduct was fundamentally incompatible with remaining on the register, representing a serious repeated pattern of dishonesty over five months.
Mitigating and aggravating factors
Mitigating factors
[Private — not in the public record]. Helen McLaughlan's continued engagement with the NMC proceedings was acknowledged by the panel, though the panel found it fell short of providing full mitigation.
Aggravating factors
• Abuse of a position of trust. • Very limited insight into failings. • Risk of harm to patients. • A pattern of misconduct over a period of 5 months, where there were numerous incidents found proved as detailed in the charges. • Undermining of medication systems designed to protect patients. • Deep seated attitudinal issues.
Source
All facts on this page are drawn from the publicly published Nursing and Midwifery Council determination linked below. MedicWatch does not editorialise the regulator’s findings.
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