Lisa Marie Strickland, also known as Lisa Driscoll, … the woman with Bonavista roots, pleaded guilty in Hamilton in January 2021 to criminal negligence causing death of her four-year-old. She later moved to Newfoundland and worked as an unlicensed nurse at long-term care homes in St. John’s and Gander.
A keen-eyed staffer at Eastern Health was the first employer to flag an unlicensed nurse who worked at various health facilities in Newfoundland and Labrador for nearly two years, says the person in charge of the college that regulates LPNs in the province.
“They, in their due diligence, identified that Lisa Driscoll was not licensed with us. She was not on our database, and they called us to inquire,” CEO and registrar of the NL College of Licensed Practical Nurses, Wanda Wadman told CBC News.
That call last summer touched off an investigation by the college that eventually linked “Lisa Driscoll” to three private nursing homes in St. John’s — Chancellor Park, Kenny’s Pond and Lanes — where she worked for varying times as an LPN.
“So thankfully Eastern Health did that and identified that to us, and then we were able to identify her name to three other employers where we believed that she had been working,” said Wadman.
Used licence number of nurse with similar name
The woman, whose legal name is Lisa Marie Strickland, spent time in an Ontario prison after pleading guilty to criminal negligence causing death in relation to the death in September 2017 of her four-year-old son Kane Driscoll. The boy died from a lethal dose of a narcotic that was prescribed to his mother. The woman worked for years as a practical nurse in Hamilton, but her licence was suspended following her interactions with the courts.
After leaving prison in early 2021, she returned to Newfoundland and used the licence number of a nurse with a similar name — data that is publicly available on the regulator’s website — to successfully apply for work at the private nursing homes and was not exposed until she applied to Eastern Health.
Wadman blamed the employers who allowed the woman to slip through the cracks.
“Employers are ultimately responsible for who they hire,” she said, adding that it’s critical for employers to thoroughly screen the identities and credentials of prospective employees. The most basic step is to compare the information on a person’s government-issued identification, such as a driver’s licence, with the information on the college’s website.
