leave four-year-old Justin Fisher unattended, nursing supervisor Ms Doris Rawlins Matthews testified yesterday.

Recovery room nurses should "never'' leave their patients unattended -- especially if they are young children and unconscious, she told a Coroner's jury.

She said Mrs. Basden should have asked someone to relieve her or take a message when she was told there was a telephone call for her the day Justin died.

And she said it was not proper for Mrs. Basden to have assumed nurse Diana Simons was on the way to relieve her when she passed her on the way to the bathroom.

She should have waited for Mrs. Simons to arrive before leaving her module in the recovery room, she said, Mrs. Simons testified this week that when she arrived for her shift in the recovery room of the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital last January she found Justin pale and not breathing, and Mrs. Basden nowhere in sight.

Justin, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Eddie Fisher, had arrived in the recovery room at 11.25 p.m. after undergoing a routine tonsillectomy.

He went into cardio-respiratory arrest at about 12.15 p.m. Doctors revived him but he was later taken off life support after it was determined he was brain dead.

The inquest into Justin's death resumed on Tuesday after a three-week adjournment. Another full week of testimony is expected before jurors begin deliberating.

Mrs. Basden testified last month that she was called away to the telephone and then went to the bathroom. But she insisted she had informed Mrs. Simons and her supervisor Ms Rawlins Matthews.

However, both Ms Rawlins Matthews and Mrs. Simons yesterday claimed the nurse had lied on the witness stand. They denied she told them she urgently needed to go the bathroom.

"There was no question Mrs. Basden was entitled to leave her module before the relief nurse arrived,'' Ms Rawlins Matthews said.

"I do not recall Pearlette Basden coming to speak to Diana or myself. If she had told us she was leaving the module I would have asked Diana to relieve her or I would have gone there myself.'' "Aren't your really saying it did not happen?,'' asked anaesthetist Dr. Tomos Huw Morris's lawyer Mr. Coles Diel.

"Yes,'' Ms Rawlins Matthews agreed.

Mrs. Basden has admitted she "took a chance'' by answering the telephone at about the time a vital medical check should have been made on Justin.

She said she had assumed a colleague taking over her shift would attend Justin.

She told the jury she accepted partial responsibility for leaving the child alone. But she said his anaesthetist Dr. Morris was also to blame for not making enough checks on Justin and not giving her enough information on his condition during the operation.

The jurors heard last month Justin had been given a higher then normal dose of anaesthetic because he was thought to be hyperactive. And they heard a printout from the vital signs monitor was not attached to his chart which travelled with him to the recovery room.

Mrs. Basden was disciplined by hospital management for not making the important vital signs check at 12.10 p.m. She testified the last time she saw Justin alive was at 12.05 p.m., just before going to answer the telephone.