A Bonavista woman has pleaded guilty to fraud and identity theft after she was caught working as a nurse at long-term care homes without a licence.

Forty-five-year-old Lisa Driscoll was first charged two years ago after police were contacted by operators of Chancellor Park.

That’s where she worked as a licensed practical nurse for more than a year, from March 2021 till June 2022, until the home was tipped off by the province’s college of licensed practical nurses, and she was fired.

Yet two months later she was hired again, this time as a registered nurse assigned to Lakeside Homes in Gander by a private staffing firm, which lasted three months before she was fired again.

That’s despite the fact she had also been previously flagged by the College of Nurses of Ontario, where she had worked as an LPN. She lost that licence after being convicted of criminal negligence causing the death of her four-year-old son eight years ago.

Driscoll was living in Hamilton and in the throes of opioid addiction at the time.

But she moved back to this province and used several aliases to dupe officials here, picking similar names to also land brief work at other long-term care homes in St. John’s.

Chancellor Park said it regretted the incident, saying there were “no negative impacts on residents.”

Central Health mostly blamed the employment firm, Staffing Solutions Inc., saying it was on them to verify credentials, but said they would be upping their oversight as well.

Driscoll, who is not in custody and was not in court today, pleaded guilty through her lawyer to two counts each of fraud over $5,000 and identify theft, and breach of a probation order.

Similar charges still remain on the provincial court docket in Gander.

Sentencing in St. John’s has been set for September.