A nurse told an inquest yesterday of her anger after being shown the horrific burns on a favourite elderly patient who died after being left in a scolding bath.

Judith Brewster Minors had returned from her morning break on March 26, 2002 to find hospital staff in sombre mood as they told her orderly Laurie Furbert had left 81-year-old Gladys Smith in a bath with the water running and she had died.

Ms Smith, of Railway Trail, Somerset Bridge had only been admitted to King Edward VII Memorial Hospital a month earlier.

A pathology report said Mrs. Smith, who had heart disease, had suffered a heart attack and two first degree burns to her feet.

Mrs. Brewster Minors recalled being shown the body.

Reading from a statement made shortly after the incident, she told the inquest: ?What I could see was indescribable. I had never seen it before. It looked like there were casings of the skin hanging from her feet.?

She said the skin looked like a popped balloon or as if a gigantic blister had burst.

Mrs. Brewster Minors became angry as the news sunk in because Mrs. Smith had been her favourite patient.

?This did not need to happen,? said Mrs. Brewster Minors, who said she had been pushing for quality of care to improve but had constantly been ignored or ridiculed.

?I was angry because there was nothing I could do.?

In the aftermath hospital managers Aldwyn Savery and Norma Smith asked staff what had happened.

?Ms (Norma Smith) said she could not believe Gladys Smith had been in there for two hours.

?I told her I knew nothing about her going in there or being left there. It was all a puzzle to me.

?I heard Laurie said: ?What do you expect, there are only two of us doing the work.? ?

But Mrs. Brewster Minors had disagreed, saying she had come in early to do an extra shift to cover for a sick colleague, which boosted staff on that section of Curtis Ward to three.

She said she had done most of the work.

Also working with Mrs. Brewster Minors that day was nurse Carmalita Francis who is set to testify later in the hearing, along with Mr. Furbert.

Mrs. Brewster Minors said she had spoken with Mrs. Smith earlier and noticed her blood pressure was too low to safely take medicine.

While doing her rounds Mrs. Brewster Minors said a patient had complained about the water being cool and she investigated and found it lukewarm but recalled staff had already been onto the boiler room about the problem.

Some time later she noticed the water was unusually hot ? hotter than she had ever known.

She said she had not known Gladys Smith had been taken to the bathroom and could not be expected to check on something she was unaware of.

When the inquest opened two weeks ago former Director of Quality and Risk Management Aldwyn Savery said Mr. Furbert had left a completely dependent patient alone in a bathtub as she began to soil herself and that the faeces may have caused a backlog which caused first degree burns.

Yesterday Mrs. Brewster Minors said Mrs. Smith wore an orange band indicated she was a fall risk and so would have been placed in the bath with a barrier stopping her from touching the taps.

Recalling the deceased woman the nurse said: ?She was so quiet, I don?t remember her complaining about anything.?

Under questioning from Ed Bailey, the lawyer representing Mrs. Smith?s family, Mrs Brewster Smith said no one was in charge of the module of Curtis Ward where she was working that day.

She said Norma Smith, as supervisor was in overall charge, but had been off.

And she told hospital lawyer Allan Doughty that the hospital policy says patients such as Mrs. Smith should not be left unattended.

Mr. Doughty told the inquest it was open to the coroner to return a verdict of death by natural causes as the primary cause of death noted by the pathologist had been heart failure.

However Coronor Edward King asked: ?Why would a coroner come to the verdict of natural causes when a medical report says otherwise??

Both Mr. Doughty and Elizabeth Christopher, who is representing the orderly, were prevented from pursuing certain lines of questioning by Mr. King who ruled them not relevant.

Ms. Christopher was prevented from asking about the policy of leaving confused and disoriented people in the bathroom.

She said: ?The Coroner can make recommendations to help avoid similar fatalities.?

But Mr. King said that was not the function of the Coroner.