There were several signs indicating a child was in trouble before his birth at Limerick Regional Hospital eight years ago, the High Court was told yesterday. The child, James Hehir, suffers from cerebral palsy and is quadriplegic.
Dr Donald Gibb, a senior obstetrician at King's Hospital, London, said the standard of midwifery care was poor and the input of the obstetrician was brief and not as involved as it should have been.
Dr Gibb, author of Foetal Monitoring Practice, was giving evidence on the fourth day of the action taken by the child, suing through his mother, Mrs Brenda Hehir of Ennis, against the Mid Western Health Board and the personal representative of the estate of the late Dr Loyola Kearney, the obstetrician who attended at the birth.
Mrs Hehir is alleging medical negligence and breach of care at the birth of her son in the Limerick hospital on September 2nd, 1990.
Mr Justice Barr has been told that when James was born, he was suffering from spastic quadriplegia and was not breathing. He had to be artificially ventilated.
Both the MWHB and the estate of the late Dr Kearney, who died in 1994, are denying any negligence or breach of duty.
Yesterday Dr Gibb said the first entry he found on Mrs Hehir's hospital chart, an entry made by Dr Kearney, was brief and incomplete and contained the wrong date.
Having examined all the medical records and notes, he believed there were several opportunities for the midwives to call Dr Kearney and for him to perform a Caesarean section on Mrs Hehir.
Dr Gibb said there was a failure to recognise several signs that the baby was in trouble. This failure was partly due to the midwives' omission but also to the fact that the medical input was not proactive enough.
The late Dr Kearney's input was brief and not as involved as it should have been, he added.
Cross-examined by Mr Michael Hanna SC, for the MWHB, Dr Gibb said that, given this was going to be a small baby and Mrs Hehir's first, he would have expected Dr Kearney to have drawn up a birth plan and put in writing.
Dr Kearney should have adopted a more hands-on approach to the birth and phoned regularly to ascertain how things were during Mrs Hehir's labour, he said.
The hearing continues on Tuesday.