Testimony expected to contradict nurses

Sharon Shore will be taking the witness stand this morning at the inquest into her daughter's death and is expected to contradict key testimony from two nurses charged with the girl's care at the Hospital for Sick Children. 

Lisa Shore, 10, was admitted to the hospital in the early hours of Oct. 22, 1998, in chronic pain from a non-life-threatening disorder. 

She was found dead in her hospital bed a few hours later after being administered morphine. 

Her mother fell asleep at about 2 a.m. in Lisa's room and woke up seconds after doctors found the girl dead, a few feet away from her, while making their morning rounds. 

Frank Gomberg, the Shore family's lawyer, has told the jury that Shore's evidence will contradict that of two nurses, who testified they attached Lisa to a monitor that would sound separate alarms if her breathing or heart rate was adversely affected by the morphine. 

Ruth Doerksen, one of the nurses, told the inquest she turned off the breathing alarm at about 2 a.m. - after it had sounded falsely three or four times - to allow Lisa to sleep. 

That would explain why no alarm sounded when Lisa's breathing rate plummeted shortly before her death. 

Doerksen also testified that after Lisa was found dead at about 7:15 a.m., she was shocked to learn that the entire monitor had been shut off. 

That would explain why the heart component of the monitor did not sound an alarm when Lisa's heart stopped beating. 

Both Doerksen and Anagaile Soriano, the second nurse, denied suggestions by Gomberg that if, in fact, they attached Lisa to a monitor, it was never turned on. 

Soriano, who had only five months' nursing experience before being entrusted to treat nine young patients alone for several hours on Oct. 22, agreed yesterday with Gomberg that her assessment of Lisa's breathing was ``sub-standard.'' 

Several contradictions appeared in the nurses' evidence by the time Soriano finished testifying. 

First, Soriano said she heard an alarm sound only once - not the three or four times referred to by Doerksen. 

Second, Soriano admitted, under cross-examination by Gomberg, that she wasn't sure if the alarm she heard came from Lisa's room. 

The jury has been told that the three leads connecting the monitor to the patient were found neatly rolled up on top of the machine in Lisa's room shortly after she died. 

Neither nurse mentioned in their hospital notes that Lisa had been attached to the monitor.