Killer nurse faces misconduct trial

A nurse who was jailed for trying to kill two elderly patients is facing a misconduct hearing.

Barbara Salisbury was jailed for five years in July 2004 after she attempted to kill two elderly patients to free up beds at Leighton Hospital in Crewe.

She will stand before a Fitness to Practise professional conduct committee hearing to decide whether she should be removed from the Nursing and Midwifery Council register.

Ward sister Salisbury, 50, was found guilty of two counts of the attempted murder of May Taylor, 88, and Frank Owen, 92, by administering overdoses of diamorphine.

She was also accused of lying the patients on their backs, in order to cause them to drown in their own lung secretions between 1999 and 2002. Both of the patients have since died. She was acquitted of trying to kill two other patients.

Sentencing Salisbury to five years on each count, Mr Justice Pitchford told her she had broken her duty and abused her trust of care towards her patients and preservation of human life.

"You chose to exercise control over the life and death of patients whose time had not quite come and whose relatives were waiting for the inevitable to occur," he said.

Salisbury's attempt to challenge the conviction in the Court of Appeal in November 2005 was quashed.

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