Police probe hospital deaths

Exclusive: detectives believe 57 `suspicious incidents' across the coun try may be linked to one nurse

DETECTIVES investigating two deaths in an intensive care unit have extended inquiries to eight other hospitals and more than 50 suspicious incidents, including patient deaths, all linked to the same female nurse.

Management at Bassetlaw district hospital, Worksop, called in Nottinghamshire police on 21 February. The move followed an internal investigation into several incidents of alleged tampering with patients' breathing apparatus and pumps delivering intravenous medication.

Sources say police inquiries have stretched across the country from Tyneside to Nottinghamshire, and eight other hospitals are understood to have been visited by members of the Bassetlaw team of detectives.

A source close to the investigation said 57 suspicious incidents in the eight hospitals had drawn the attention of police. A number of patients were now dead, the source said.

Detective Superintendent Peter Coles, leading the investigation, said he could not comment on the course of the investigation.

``I can say that inquiries continue, and the focus remains Bassetlaw hospital,'' Det Supt Coles said.

More than 20 officers have been working full-time on the Bassetlaw investigation, processing data on computer. It is understood that more than 700 people have been interviewed, with clinical data scrutinised by medical experts.

Det Supt Coles said that evidence had been gathered which suggested that apparatus had been tampered with during treatment of five patients in the Worksop intensive care unit. Two had subsequently died.

Investigations were complicated by the serious or critical conditions of the patients at the time of alleged tampering. ``Because of the nature of the unit, numbers of patients do unfortunately die,'' Mr Coles said.

Bassetlaw hospital, run by an NHS Trust, has refused to comment on the investigation since disclosing the suspicious incidents on the four-bed unit between November 1993 and January this year.

The police have consulted Superintendent Stuart Clifton, the Lincolnshire detective who conducted the protracted and complex murder investigation into incidents at Grantham general hospital which culminated in the arrest of Beverly Allitt, a children's nurse.

Allitt, who suffered from the mental illness Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, was treated at Bassetlaw hospital for self-inflicted injuries during her trial at Nottingham Crown Court. She was convicted of the murder of four patients and a sequence of attacks on nine other children.

Mr Coles's squad is understood to have informed all patients whose cases have been investigated by the police.

Ann Alexander, a leading medical negligence lawyer who represented families of Allitt's victims, said it was important that families involved in the Bassetlaw case receive expert counselling, whatever the outcome of police inquiries. ``Some families could be permanently harmed by the knowledge that equipment in an intensive care unit may have been deliberately tampered with,'' Ms Alexander said.

``It is important that, from the outset, they are told what has happened to them, and not have to wait for the conclusion of the police investigation. Families and individual patients who are not told the full details could have difficulty coming to terms with these episodes, even if no criminal act is responsible.''

The police are believed to have briefed the Department of Health and Trent Regional Health Authority about the investigation.