Hope Hospital launches bogus nurse inquiry

An inquiry into how a bogus nurse obtained work five times in a Manchester hospital was launched yesterday. The woman worked on a geriatric ward at the Hope Hospital in Salford earlier this year, fooling a ward sister by arriving dressed in the uniform of an enrolled nurse. The deception came to light after her six-year-old son was taken to Bolton General Hospital in a coma after being given an overdose of insulin. He has since fully recovered.

Police, who released the mother and her boyfriend on bail last week, are understood to have considered the possibility that the mother suffered from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, in which a carer induces illness in a child to draw attention to him or herself. Bill Sang, Salford Royal Hospitals Trust chief executive, said they were concerned about how staff had been tricked; there was no suggestion the woman had tried to harm patients.