A NURSE accused of trying to murder five elderly patients in her care at Leighton Hospital will face a 10-week trial beginning next month.

Barbara Salisbury, 48, will appear before Chester Crown Court on Wednesday, April 21 charged with five separate counts of attempted murder.

Defence lawyers ploughing through 54,000 pages of medical evidence appealed to Mr Justice Pitchford for the trial to be delayed.

But in a hearing at Swansea Crown Court on Wednesday the judge ruled for the second time that the April 21 trial date must remain.

Salisbury, now of Pontybodkin, near Mold, North Wales, has denied trying to kill the patients, aged from 76 to 92, between May 1999 and April 2002.

During that time the mother-of-two was working on a general surgical ward at the Crewe hospital and lived in Lime Grove, Shavington.

She was suspended from the hospital on full pay in August 2002 after medical chiefs launched an investigation into allegations of serious misconduct.

A police probe followed in which detectives interviewed staff in an operation lasting for more than a year.

The nurse is accused of trying to murder Reuben Thompson, 81, Frank Owen, 92, Frances Taylor, 88, Bertram Madeley, 76, and James Byrne, 76. All have since died.