A PATIENT accidentally set fire to herself in her hospital bed with a cigarette lighter and her oxygen supply, an Exeter inquest has been told.

Shocked staff were alerted by her cries and found her on fire on her bed in a side room which was filled with smoke and flames.

Janet Barden, whose last known permanent address was at Summerland Court in Brixham, had already had two lighters confiscated from her by nursing staff after she was admitted suffering from pneumonia.

Fire policy at the hospital is to be reviewed in the wake of the incident.

Mrs Barden, who was thought to have been living in Exeter, had been found drunk and incapable in a street eleven hours earlier and arrested for her own welfare.

In the middle of the night after she had been admitted to hospital, she may have tried to light a cigarette.

But the flame from the lighter ignited the oxygen in her mask which had an 'explosive' effect.

The 49-year-old was on high levels of oxygen but it acted as an accelerant when she lit up.

Mrs Barden suffered head, neck and chest burns and her oxygen mask melted on her body.

Staff at the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital smothered the flames with a bedsheet as the fire licked round the side room she was being treated in.

An inquest heard she was later transferred to a specialist burns hospital in Bristol where she died three days later.

Mrs Barden had been arrested for being drunk on a street in Exeter and taken to a local police station but was admitted to Exeter's main hospital when her condition deteriorated, the inquest heard. She had been put into a side room because it was initially suspected she had swine fever which was actually not the case.

But doctors and nurses regularly monitored her condition until she set fire to herself at 5am one morning in November last year.

Senior matron Sarah Dodds said two lighters had been removed from Mrs Barden for safety reasons and put into her personal possessions bag outside the side room. Mrs Dodds said she could not say whether Mrs Barden did have a cigarette or whether she had fetched her lighters from outside the room.

She told the Exeter inquest: "I have never had this incident occur in my nursing career. It was very shocking and disturbing for the nurses involved."

Mrs Barden was said to be 'drowsy, rousable but refused to answer questions' when she was being treated.

Greater Devon coroner Dr Elizabeth Earland said she would write to the hospital's chief executive about reviewing fire policy at the hospital.

The coroner said the jobless photographic processor suffered extensive burns but said she did not die from those burns but from bronchial pneumonia. The inquest heard that the hospital trust's fire advisor said there was no fire fighting equipment or fire blankets in side rooms.

A verdict of death by natural causes was recorded.