A hospital orderly told an inquest yesterday of how an elderly woman could have been left alone hoisted above a bath with a hot tab running for well over an hour before being discovered.

Gladys Smith, 81, suffered a heart attack and two first degree burns to her feet and died shortly after she was found on March 26, 2002.

Yesterday King Edward VII Memorial Hospital orderly Laurie Furbert told coroner Ed King that he had put the woman in the bath while nurse Carmalita Francis dealt with her as he went on with other duties.

He returned, dried her off and was about to move her from the chairlift when she began defecating so Mr. Furbert showered some of the faeces after lowering her.

He told the inquest he opened up both faucets but found the hot tab to be ?below warm? as the water had not been hot all day and so he turned off the cold tap. The patient indicated she wasn?t finished said Mr. Furbert.

?I went back into the building and told Ms Francis that her patient was not quite ready, she was having a bowel movement and then I went back to check on the men.

?Miss Francis then said she was going on a break.

?I made sure no one was left to be done and no one was left unattended to and then I went to the cafe before it closed.?

He said he collected a breakfast, took it back with him and then resumed duties but then found Ms Francis who was writing notes on the computer, including an entry which said Mrs. Smith had been bed bathed.

He said that nurse then asked where Mrs. Smith was. ?I told her the physio must have been walking her. She told me she had not seen her and then she told be she must still be in the tub.

?She told me a relative had come looking for Mrs. Smith that morning and that she had totally forgotten she was in the tub. Ms Francis then went to the tub room, pulled open the door and started to scream for help.

?She was in the tub room and there was nothing but steam coming out.?

Mr. Furbert said the nurse left crying and didn?t return while he and another orderly found a lethargic Mrs. Smith.

?A doctor came and told me to get an oxygen tube and mask. And then he told me not to worry about it. He examined her for breathing sounds and palpitations but there was none.?

Mr. Furbert said hospital manager Norma Smith told nurse Francis to alter the record to say she had been told the patient was in bed but really she had been in the tub.

He told the court he had turned the water on between 10.10 and 10.20 a.m. but he estimated the time the dying woman was found was around 11.30 a.m.

There was no water in the tub said Mr. Furbert when the patient was found struggling for breath, and he said he had made sure her feet were not left in the water or faeces before he had left her.

Asked if Mrs. Smith would have been capable of getting out of the chair-lift by herself Mr. Furbert, who is now an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) working in intensive care at the hospital, said only the nurse would know.

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

Earlier in the hearing nurse Francis had said she had gone looking for Mrs. Smith and found her in a room full of steam with the bath blocked up with faeces and, as she picked the patient up, the flesh fell away from her feet.

Last month nurse Judith Brewster Minors, who was the third person working on the unit that day, recalled seeing casings of skin hanging from Mrs. Smith?s feet as if a gigantic blister had burst.

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

However Mr. Furbert said the drain was not blocked off when he came back and he denied taking a massive risk by leaving the patient alone in the bathroom with the hot tap running.

The inquest continues today.