Other Cases:

The MRSA Virus

MRSA infections occur mostly in hospitals and healthcare facilities, with a higher incident rate in nursing homes or long-term care facilities. Rates of MRSA infection are also increased in hospitalised patients who are treated with quinolones. Healthcare provider to patient transfer is common, especially when healthcare providers move from patient to patient without performing necessary handwashing techniques between patients. However, it should be noted that MRSA can cause infections outside of hospitals as well.

Symphysiotomy

We provide support to a group of women who underwent this procedure. There are approximately 150 women in this group from all over the country. This is a group facilitated by Patient Focus.
Many of them suffer from serious side-effects of this operation. Many are in terrible pain and feel very angry that this operation was performed on them when a Caesarean Section should have been done instead. They never received a proper explanation about the procedure and the possible side-effects, in fact some of them were never told that they had the procedure and only found out many years later. Many of them did not consent to having this procedure.

Lourdes Hospital Inquiry

Dr. Michael Neary was struck off the Medical Register of The Medical Council of Ireland in September 2003 following a lengthy hearing before the Fitness to Practice Committee of the Medical Council. This action was the culmination of a series of investigations and inquiries which commenced in October 1998 and carried out by Hospital Management at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, the North Eastern Health Board, the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and finally the Fitness to Practice committee.

The decision of the Medical Council caused much Media comment. Former patients who had defended the service received now began to question aspects of their care. Other patients raised issues surrounding the practice of other obstetricians in the Hospital. As a result of the range of submissions made by Patient Focus and the comments of former patients the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Michael Martin TD, asked the Government to set up an inquiry. The non statutory private inquiry was established by the Government on 6th April 2004 under Judge Maureen Harding Clark S.C..

The Inquiry considered many submissions and interviewed a wide range of Medical and Nursing staff, Management, GPs, Members of regulatory and training bodies, patients and others. Almost 320 interviews with 280 witnesses were conducted.

The facts uncovered by the Inquiry revealed that any isolated institution which fails to have in place a process of outcome review by peers and benchmark comparators can produce similar scandals as those which occurred in the Lourdes Hospital.

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