A MEDICAL expert has told an inquest how a nurse may have quickened her patients' deaths.

Dr Gilbert Park said there was evidence to suggest drugs given by Sister Kathleen Atkinson had hastened the death of two critically ill pensioners.

An inquest heard how Dr Park was brought in by police in 1997 to investigate a number of deaths at the intensive care unit at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary.

Yesterday, he told an inquest into the deaths of four patients at the unit, that Sister Atkinson may have contributed to their deaths.

Mary Burdon, 69, from Tyneside, died in February 1991 when she was taken to the intensive care unit after an emergency operation for a burst ulcer.

As her condition deteriorated she was given regular doses of morphine to ease her suffering.

However, the inquest heard how 51-year-old Sister Atkinson gave the dying pensioner extra doses which quickened her demise.

Dr Park also told how essential drugs given to dying 77-year-old Gladys Ward, from Rochdale, Lancashire, were withdrawn, which made her die sooner.

However, Dr Park was unable to say whether Sister Atkinson's actions had contributed to the deaths of 14-year-old cancer sufferer Claire Louise Marsh, from County Durham, and 15-year-old burns victim Patricia Dryden, from Blyth, Northumberland.

The inquest follows a police investigation into Sister Atkinson after she was sacked from her £23,000-a-year post at the hospital following an internal inquiry.

The inquiry was discontinued in February 1988, but Home Secretary Jack Straw decided inquests should be held into the deaths.

The inquest continues.