Opinion: Mistakes at the maternity unit at St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny need to be examined

When it comes to women’s health in Ireland we have a shameful record.

In the past women were locked up and their babies stolen from them and the women were left to grieve and carry their loss in silence.

I am in my early forties and as a teenager I remember friends getting pregnant in their late teens - it sure as hell wasn’t easily even then in the Nineties to raise a child ‘out of wedlock’ but fortunately the women I knew managed to do that and did a magnificient job too! Still it was a struggle and part of that was there was a bizarre stigma attached to unmarried women who had babies.

Roll on the decades and we are thankfully living in a liberal and freer society. Women finally have automony over their bodies and there is acceptance that people can live and love as they choose. However we haven’t come as far as we think, not by a long shot.

Last week in this newspaper I spoke with James Campbell, the father of Tracey Campbell Fitzpatrick - a 36-year woman, who went into St Luke’s Hospital in March 2016 to give birth to her son and came out of the same hospital in a coffin.

David McMurray worked there at that time as a consultant obstetrician/gynaecologist and in Feburary he was found guilty by the Medical Council of professional misconduct and poor professional performance over his failure to attend to Tracey Campbell-Fitzpatrick in a sufficiently timely manner when he knew her clinical condition required his attendance at the hospital on the night her death, during a Fitness to Practice Tribunal. After three phone calls from a senior midwife David McMurray arrived 43 minutes later, even though he was living between five to eight minutes away, but it was too late and Tracey was pronounced dead just over an hour later.

Tracey’s family are calling for a public inquiry into the maternity services at St Luke’s Hospital and they are well within their rights to do so.

Serious questions need to be answered not only in relation to the untimely death of Tracey and why there was such a delay in the doctor seeing her when she was haemorraging massively. Her family deserve to know what caused the delay and what was said between the midwife and McMurray during the three conversations prior to his arrival at the hospital, some 43 minutes after the first call.

This week St Luke’s Hospital made the headlines again when the Supreme Court ruled that the HSE acted fairly and reasonably when it suspended and recommended that Professor Ray O’Sullivan be dismissed from his former job at St Luke’s Hospital.

It had been alleged that he carried out unauthorised and unapproved actions on five female patients in September 2018.

Prof O’Sullivan denied any wrongdoing, and following a mediation the consultant settled his action against the HSE.

However, the HSE sought to have one issue that arose out of litigation, concerning the fairness of its decision to suspend Prof O’Sullivan and recommend to a Ministerial committee that he be dismissed, determined by the Supreme Court.

At the Supreme Court last Wednesday Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne said that there was significant evidence available to allow the HSE place Prof O’Sullivan on administrative leave. The Chief Justice said that the HSE had a ‘bona fide’ view that the behaviour of Prof O’Sullivan gave rise to an immediate and serious risk to the health, welfare and safety of patients or staff and that he should have been suspended.

Both of these cases are worrying to say the least.

While undoubtedly the vast majority of the staff at St Luke’s Hospital are and were hardworking and dedicated to the care of the patients there the actions of both of the consultants named above was deemed to be far below what is considered acceptable practice.

If a public inquiry were to take place it would allow a light to be shone on these services and would hopefully result in restoring people’s confidence in both the gynaecological and maternity services at St Luke’s.

And that would be a great thing to happen for all who use and work in the service.