Obstetrician challenges misconduct decision

A consultant obstetrician at Sligo General Hospital began a High Court action yesterday resisting his proposed removal from the register of medical doctors.

The Medical Council has ruled he was guilty of professional misconduct in relation to his treatment of four female patients over a two-year period from 2002 to 2004.

Among the complaints made against Dr Vincent Moore was that, without carrying out the necessary tests to support his suspicion that a 71-year-old woman had cancer of the womb, he had proceeded to remove her womb in late February 2003.

When the woman's womb was examined following her death some weeks later on St Patrick's Day, it was found she did not have cancer, the High Court heard yesterday.

While there is no suggestion that anything Dr Moore did had caused that woman's death, it could be said that, if the hysterectomy was not carried out, what followed "may not have occurred", Eoin McCullough SC, for the Medical Council, said.

Her family had legitimate concerns about how she was treated by Dr Moore, counsel added.

Prior to the hysterectomy being carried out, her two daughters, both of whom were qualified nurses, had attended consultations between their mother, who had mild dementia, and disputed his account of what had taken place at those meetings.

In evidence yesterday, one of the daughters said she had no recollection of her mother declining, at a meeting with Dr Moore, to undergo a procedure to give a tissue sample.

While Dr Moore may have put such an option to her mother, she never heard him do so, she said. Her recollection was of Dr Moore saying he would carry out a hysterectomy the following week.

In proceedings which opened yesterday before Mr Justice Michael Hanna, Dr Moore, with an address at Kilwarlin Avenue, Hillsborough, Co Down, is seeking to overturn the Medical Council's decision of November 2005 that he was guilty of professional misconduct in aspects of his treatment of four female patients at Sligo General Hospital.

He is also challenging the finding that he was unfit to practise medicine by reason of physical and mental disability.

The court was told he had been diagnosed with a clinical depression but had responded well to treatment. It also heard Dr Moore had claimed his working conditions, the nature of demands made on him at Sligo General and the lack of support there, had caused him stress.

A finding of professional misconduct was made in relation to three other patients:

A 37-year-old woman who attended for a procedure to deal with an ectopic pregnancy where there was a three-hour delay in surgery to stop bleeding.

A 56-year-old woman who was referred to Dr Moore with a condition involving a bulging of the vaginal wall when, it was contended, Dr Moore had made the wrong and a "very strange" choice of operation where there was a risk of damage to the bowel and where the woman afterwards suffered skin necrosis, septicaemic shock and renal failure.

A 40-year-old woman whose healthy baby was delivered but the placenta was partially retained and the woman then underwent three separate procedures to remove it. The woman had suffered severe blood loss.

The case continues today.