Patient deaths 'due to systemic failures'

A report into a nurse who was charged with murdering three patients has concluded she was "not a Beverley Allitt" and suggested a "combination of individual and systems failure" were to blame.

The independent inquiry revealed a catalogue of systemic failures in the way Anne Grigg-Booth was allowed to carry out her work as a night nurse practitioner at Airedale NHS Trust.

The damning report said Grigg-Booth was "utterly convinced of her own clinical prowess" and at night "she was effectively in charge of the hospital".

Grigg-Booth, from Nelson, Lancashire, died before she could go on trial at Bradford Crown Court. She was 52.

The charges related to her injecting patients with high doses of painkilling drugs such as morphine and diamorphine on the night shift at Airedale General Hospital near Keighley, West Yorkshire, where she worked.

After her death, detectives from West Yorkshire Police said they believed she could have killed many more patients in her 25-year career.

But an independent inquiry report concluded that it was unlikely that Grigg-Booth "deliberately set out to harm patients" and said the events investigated "occurred as a result of a combination of individual and systems failure".

The nurse was charged with murdering June Driver, 67, in July 2000; Eva Blackburn, 75, in November 2001; and 96-year-old Annie Midgley in July 2002.

She was also accused of trying to kill 42-year-old Michael Parker in June 2002.

Police said she never gave them any clue about what her motivation was and always denied the charges.