A senior nurse caught "wrapped in a blanket and asleep" while in charge of a floor at a care home for the elderly was fairly dismissed for gross misconduct, a top judge has ruled.

Anita Tayeh was in charge of the second floor of the Magnolia Court care home in Granville Road, Golders Green, on December 2, 2009, when she was found to be snoozing during a 12-hour night shift.

She was also found wedging residents' doors open with items of furniture and was given a final written warning by her employers, Barchester Healthcare Ltd (BHL).

Ms Tayeh also failed to carry out observations on a patient with a suspected broken hip for three hours in February 2010 as she waited for a doctor to arrive, and to have made a "false record" relating to another patient's drip feed.

She was sacked for gross misconduct on March 10, 2010, but successfully battled to have that finding overturned by an employment tribunal last April.

Now Judge David Richardson, sitting in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, has reversed that decision, after finding her conduct in relation to the false record and the failure to observe amounted to gross misconduct worthy of dismissal.

Delivering his ruling, Judge Richardson said: "BHL runs care homes for vulnerable and elderly people. Such an organisation is dependent on the keeping of proper records as a check on the treatments which patients receive.

"It is entitled to expect that professional nursing staff will complete them accurately and that there will be a record of the treatment actually given."

Finding that the employment tribunal had wrongly "substituted its own view for that of the employer" when allowing Ms Tayeh's appeal, the judge went on to reverse the decision.