Mistakes made in Roscommon patient safety - consultant

Mistakes in patient treatment and care were made on a regular basis at Roscommon County Hospital before accident and emergency services there were closed in 2011, a medical consultant has said.

Geriatrician Dr Gerry O Mara a told a Medical Council fitness to practise hearing today that he was one of three consultants working at the hospital who warned the HSE they could not stand over patient safety at it.

He said this was due to severe pressure from numbers of patients attending the accident and emergency department, many of whom were on trolleys.

Dr O’Mara said each consultant was seeing about 1,300 patients in the A&E each year, a figure which compared to about 500 to 600 patients per consultant at Galway University Hospital.

Dr O’Mara said the hospital was also understaffed and out of a supposed complement of 12 doctors, there was a registrar, a senior house officer, two interns and two consultants who could be depended upon. The remainder were locums who were hired in for a “a day, a week or a month” at most.

“Anything could show up and we had to deal with it” he said.

Dr O’Mara was called as an expert witness by Dr SardarAli, another consultant at Roscommon hospital in 2011, who is accused of displaying poor professional performance in a case where a 77-year-old man died.

On the third day of the hearing in Dublin yesterday, Dr O’Mara recalled the pressure on staff and said consultants would be called out at night to take charge where locums should have managed.

He said the locum staff were not of “a standard” and mistakes were made. On rounds in the morning, he said, “you would always find something had been missed, you had to check everything”.

“A lot of mistakes were made.... I know I was making mistakes, we were trying our hardest”.

Dr O Mara said word had got around about conditions and patients’ families would come in primed with questions, putting more pressure on the consultants.

“It spiralled out of control, it was extremely dangerous” he said.

He said the consultants wrote to the HSE to say they could no longer stand over patient services, and in July 2011 the A&E unit at Roscommon General Hospital was closed.

Conditions have now improved, he said, and he was satisfied to stand over the services offered at the hospital. But he added in relation to busy A&E units at county hospitals that “you can’t have a proper standard of care if you are taking everything in”.

Dr Ali is defending himself against the allegations of poor professional performance because of the potential legal costs of up to €50,000.

The allegations arise out of the treatment of Roy Eyre who was admitted through A&E to Roscommon General Hospital in March 2011, and died there in April.

The hearing was adjourned until April 11th.