Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Not the main news but pretty scary that there could be a killer targeting patients at a hospital in Stockport...It's suspected that someone has messed about with saline solutions..3 suspected deaths so far.
Anyone who has spent sometime in hospital will know this solution is mostly in drips and is commonly used...now I don't know all the ins and outs but I would imagine the only access to this medication would be by professional staff .. I mean not the cleaners or catering staff.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Absolutely, it was in ampules of saline. These are used for flushes, which are done daily, if you have a drip in sometimes when nothing is going through your blood can back up and flushes are used to clear anything in the line, they are also used for mixes of IV antibiotics. As a student nurse i'm not allowed to touch drips (except to diconnect them) but watch it on a regular basis, but the ampules are used for many different procedures, not just for mixing antibiotics or flushes. I don't know about other trusts but at my hospital the ampules are kept in a locked cabinet in the locked treatment roon (the treatment room is where nurses mix drugs/antibiotics, where controlled drugs such as morphine are kept, also all clinical items (dressings, catheters, wound packs, syringes etc...) are kept. In my hospital this room is locked and is only accessable by 2 nurses with a keycode.

Maybe Stockport needs to take note?? I work on a diabetic ward and insulin is extremely well controlled, who the hell got hold of enough insulin to put it in the ampules?? Thats my worry!!!

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

There are some people who are sick in the head, its bad enough having to go into hospital, but when when some one who is charged with the care of the sick goes on this type of spree, its very frightening for patients and their relatives. You don't want the added pressure of wondering if your safe in hospital when your already very vulnerable

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

If the Saline has indeed been contaminated with insulin it could have come from anywhere in the supply chain from manufacture to use. Insulin is not a difficult drug to get hold of and the plastic saline ampoules would be much easier to contaminate than the old glass ones. A fine bore needle ought to do it. I wish them well with their investigation but don't expect a conclusion quickly, this could take a while.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

so are all ampoules of saline now plastic Lettie?

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

I haven't seen a glass one for years Margaret. They tend to be plastic with a twist off top. As far as medicines go, Insulin is an easy one to get hold of. How many Insulin Dependent Diabetics do we have in this country???? All of these people will keep their insulin in their fridge at home. Therefore, there are potentially hundreds of thousands of people with access to Insulin in this country if you bear in mind that Diabetic's and their families can get hold of Insulin, manufacturers, delivery drivers, Pharmacists and their assistants, Hospital Porters, Nurses, Doctors etc..
Could take a while this one.... Sadly, it is this kind of incident which destroys peoples trust in their hospitals. I would be looking for someone with a massive grudge.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Sadly All It takes for me to be convinced Is your Avatar And Signature :eek::D:D

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Do they use glass for anything like that these days Margaret, one of my meds comes in small single does sealed vials, and they are plastic, you very rarely get tabs of any type in bottles these days they're all in bubble packs (which it a lot of cases are crap.) For my part there are some of my meds which I take out of bubble packs and fill my old pill bottles (which I sterilize regularly along with all my equipment), infact I'm actually after about half a dozen old pill bottles as the ones I have are getting worn.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Well, John having been left the service for 9 years I don't know.
All that I know is that glass is safer from a contamination point of view and from a recycling point of view too.
You cannot get into a glass ampoule unless you break it.........but as Lettei has said it would be relatively easy to contaminte plactic vials with a fine bore needle, and you cannot see that it has been tampered with.
If they were still using glass ampoules, then the contamination would have had to have occured at the point of manufacture.
It is going to be really difficult to investigate.

And although it may be an NHS employee, it could just as easily be someone from outside.
I remember one guy who came to Blackburn, got himself a stethoscope and a white coat and spent time at Blackburn Royal conning people he was an anaesthetist(paul somebody or other...it will come back to me )People were shocked that this could happen.......but it did, and who is to say that it isn't somebody like this.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Some injectable medications still come in glass ampoules but the generic stuff like saline, water for injections etc is all plastic now. Bogus staff can be a problem in the NHS, there are a few organised gangs who target hospitals to steal belongings and they often have fake IDs on an NHS neck ribbon. We get warnings about bogus doctors by e mail these days but in busy departments, where nobody can get to their e mail, they go unnoticed. Another problem is the amount of Locum docs that the NHS gets. Some Doctors may only work at your hospital for one shift. If they have been hired by your hospital then you have to assume that all the relevant checks have been done.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

BBC News - Stepping Hill Hospital deaths: Nurse on murder arrest

Seems they've arrested a nurse in connection with this incident

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Formal charges now laid.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

BBC News - Stepping Hill Hospital: Nurse charged after deaths yep seems so.:eek:

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Somebody must be sick and twisted to be there to help treat the sick and then go on and do that

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

So the nurse who was arrested, charged and named by police, has now had all charges against her dropped. It seems that the evidence that they thought would prove her guilt has not emerged.

So why was she arrested? Why was she charged? Why was she named?

Either they know she is guilty and they just can't put the evidence together to justify charging her.....

..or they were never sure about her guilt but charged her just the same. If so, why? Did they act on gossip and tittle tattle? Were they under pressure to charge someone, regardless of evidence of guilt? Was she a soft option, possibly arrested because someone had a grudge against her?

The police and hospital authorities have some important questions to answer. They owe it to the families of the deceased.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

CPS decide who is charged not the Police

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Good post...I'll be honest and say that I (and I reckon most people) thought she was the culprit simply because she had been charged by the police ..for the CPS to drop all charges and not be challenged says this nurse is innocent.. and like she has said there is still a killer out there.:eek:

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Wrong way round mate..the Police make the charge then the CPS decide on the evidence wether or not the accused goes to court

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

I don't actually think the drips were tampered with. I think it was a manufacturing fault. It's possible they were contaminated on the production line.

Maybe they were just unlucky and it didn't detect anything till patients died. And of course a few deaths pointed to the drips and automatically thought one of the nursing staff was tampering with the drips.



If this nurse is provided innocent cue the big compensation payout.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

No matter what the amount of "payout" this nurse may or may not get money is not the factor here.. this lady has been banged up,slagged off and as we have seen very many times hammered by the press..I've admitted I had her guilty by the fact she was charged... what sort of future working life has this women got?... her world has been ripped up by incompetent police seeking anyone who fits the crime.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

You wouldn't have been alone.

Since it was a widely reported story, I guess she now feels lucky it didn't go to trial, if people already had her marked down as guilty.

She probably feels luckier still that we no longer have the death penalty, seeing how close she came to standing trial for murder.

We should all remember the most basic concept of British law, that someone should be assumed to be innocent, until proven otherwise.

Despite what the press have decided to report.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

I think the comment from the CPS is interesting. I quote:

'... Miss Leighton had been charged on the basis there was "reasonable suspicion she had committed the offences and there were reasonable grounds for believing the continuing investigation would provide further evidence within a reasonable amount of time.....when we make a decision on this basis, it would be wrong of us to keep a suspect in custody indefinitely without keeping a very close eye on what evidence is emerging and whether objections to bail can be justified....the inquiries, which are still ongoing, have not so far provided us with a stronger case which would meet the test that there is sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction. This is the test all cases must meet for a prosecution to go ahead."

You can infer from this (that to borrow the Scottish legal term) that it is so far, a case of 'guilt not proven' at least as far as the CPS is concerned. Certainly, the evidence collected - namely, her prints on a tampered saline drip bag is a long, long way off 'owt that would stand up in court so you start to wonder if the Manchester cops banged her up simply as a precautionary measure rather as a precursor of an actual prosecution. In which case, what else was done to stop further criminal acts?

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

The physical evidence of tampered test tubes is one thing, but what about the extensive interviewing of the suspect by experienced police officers and criminal psychologists, who would surely have come to some conclusions by now about her guilt or innocence?

Are we being told that nothing that she has said in these interviews, nor her whole demeanour and behaviour, has led the interviewers to be satisfied as to her guilt? If they had the slightest suspicion of her guilt, surely that would justify her continued custody.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Unfortunately, criminal psychology is not an exact science; forensic evidence is. If – as is reported the only evidence so far is one print on one drip bag, then that would simply not stand as the basis for successful prosecution. I would have assume that the exercise facing the cops is to go through the staff rotas and work out exactly who was where and when over the period the crimes were committed (assuming, of course, that the drips were contaminated within the hospital and not at some point prior). In addition, because hospitals are relatively ‘open’ institutions, it is possible that these crimes were committed by visitors or even by another patient (don’t know over what time the crimes were done). On top of all this, they will probably be interviewing surviving victims to see if they can possibly recall who may have may have been around their bedside and been in a position to play around with the drips.

There’s a long way to go on this yet and I for one am certainly a long way from being convinced of the guilt of this young lady.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Think its time to stop naming people who are accused of a crime until they are found guilty, the have been numerous cases in the past especially Rape case where a man has had malicious complaints against him and has been found not guilty, whereas the mans name has been blacken whilst the woman retains anonymity throughout, this is totally wrong because as we all know mud sticks

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

it would be impossible for intravenous solutions to be contaminated by insulin on the production line...unless it was done deliberately.

Intravenous fluid could be contaminated in other ways on the production line by a production fault.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

This nurse whose face has been splashed all over the papers, and whose lifestyle has been subject to criticism, will find it very difficult to find work again.....despite the fact that the case against her was unproven.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Unless, of course, someone else is arrested, charged, brought before the courts and found guilty. In which case she should get a nice little payout from GMPS plus a few quid from a newspaper story and she should then be able to resume her career without a blemish to her name.

It was not that long ago that a landlord from Bristol was arrested and questioned over the death of a young, female architect who was one of his tenants. He was so weird looking that the press automatically assumed guilt. The real culprit was the victim's neighbour - now banged up - but the landlord is in line for a nice little payout from practically every major national newspaper for personal damages.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Although she's been cleared she's still on the nursing black list

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

That was a classic case of the press putting two and two together and getting five. They delved into his past and printed school photos and everything. However weird he looked, the poor bloke deserves every penny he gets in damages!

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Think he's already got damages, sure I saw something on the news a couple of weeks ago

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

The CPS took over charging decisions in the most serious, sensitive and complex cases in 2006, but police always retained around 67% of all charging decisions – made up of high volumes of less serious cases.

‘The CPS continues make charging decisions in the most complex and serious cases, and these changes will clarify the distinction between CPS and police charging responsibility, as well as continuing to speed up the charging process without affecting the quality of decision making.

Charging powers passed from CPS to police | The Law Gazette

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

Christopher Jefferies has accepted substantial damages from eight newspapers.http://bristolstuff.com/wp-content/u.../07/831681.jpg
He rented a flat to Jo at his property in Canynge Road in Clifton and questioned as part of the investigation into her death last December – but later released without charge.
Legal action was taken against the papers after articles were published linking him with her murder.
At the High Court today, he was awarded substantial but undisclosed libel damages for what were “seriously defamatory” allegations against him.
The Sun, the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Record, Daily Star and The Scotsman have all publicly apologised

Thanks to Jo Yeates: Landlord Awarded Libel Damages – Bristol Stuff

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

I agree.

I don't think someone's name should be published, and made public, until after they've been found guilty.

Mud does stick.

We all remember thescreaming headlines when someone's been arrested and charged with a crime.

Not as easy to find the two line report, tucked away on page seventeen, when it turns out they were innocent.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

I was just thinking of him, before I got down to your post.

The press had him hanged, drawn, and quartered.

He should be compensated.

Though sod the apologies in the press.

Those named newspapers should pay.

They might not be as keen to do the same thing in the future, if it hurts them where they'll most feel it...in their pockets.

Re: Someone is killing hospital patients
 

I think we all must be a tad guilty, because when I saw that guy at first I have to say that I tended to believe what I read and saw on the box, probably the same way as the nurse, but it is getting silly now trial by tabloid, so I think the time as come to allow people anonymity until proved guilty, but I also think that anonymity is taken away from people who make false accusations, which still doesn't happen in boggus rape cases