Detectives search home of nurse in hospital overdosing allegations

INVESTIGATORS have removed items from the home of a nurse at the centre of allegations of overdosing patients at Naas General Hospital.

Plainclothes officers searched the house, located in a quiet suburban estate in Co Kildare as part of an ongoing investigation. It is believed they removed several items of potential evidence after the search last Tuesday.

The nurse was suspended from Naas General Hospital by the South-Western Area Health Board last month.

The action was taken when medical staff, concerned that she had administered unnecessarily high levels of sedative drugs to elderly patients, reported her to the hospital authorities.

The nurse, in her 30s and originally from Co Galway, has denied any wrongdoing and expressed shock at the allegations made against her.

The complaints led to one of the hospital’s former patients being exhumed from a grave in Co Wicklow.

Gardaí yesterday said they are still awaiting the results of toxicology reports conducted on the body of John Gethings from Baltinglass, Co Wicklow, who died earlier this year.

Garda admit the future course of their inquiry will be dictated by the results of these reports which are not expected for another few weeks.

Until then, no decision will be taken whether to exhume another former patient who was treated by the nurse.

Kildare coroner Prof Denis Cusack has already said that existing information led him to believe that the death of the two patients ‘may have occurred in an unnatural manner’.