THIS nurse who dragged a 96-year-old woman to the toilet in agony has failed in her third attempt to get her job back.

Bongiwe Nogcantsi, 45, was found guilty of three charges of professional misconduct in 2002 and struck off over her behaviour at the Westminster Osbaldwick nursing home in York.

She left a pensioner petrified her limbs would break after dragging the 96-year-old to the toilet then roughly putting her to bed.

The patient suffered from a condition which meant the slightest twisting of her arms and legs caused extreme pain.

Nogcantsi also gave an 86-year-old woman three pills without recording the prescriptions in her notes and failed to bandage another woman properly in March and February of 2001. Another patient suffered pain and swelling after South African Nogcantsi failed to properly bandage a bruise to her leg.

The hearing at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) was the third time Nogcansti has tried to get her name back on the register.

Piers Arnold, for the NMC, told the committee Nogcansti applied to be restored to the register in June 2003 but was refused.

In November the same year her request was again turned down because there was no evidence she had taken any steps to retrain.

At this Wednesday's hearing, Nogcansti read a handwritten statement to the committee and said she was "deeply sorry for behaving irresponsibly and unprofessionally".

"I am begging to be given a chance to practice as a nurse again in your country," she said. "I admit the mistakes that were made in 2002. I am really sorry for what I did. I take full responsibility for it." Nogcansti said she had not been able to concentrate because of financial problems and that she missed her children who she had left with a sister in South Africa. "I was under stress, I was new, I didn't know anybody. All that stress that I had, I projected it on to my patients," she admitted.

But the committee was not convinced she had fully acknowledged the seriousness of her past mistakes, or that she had completed adequate training to prove she was capable of treating patients safely.

Committee chairman, Marianne Cowpe, accepted Nogcansti had been under stress but said the circumstances leading to her removal from the register were serious.

Updated: 09:51 Friday, September 30, 2005