"Mismanagement" at Dublin's Tallaght hospital "helped contribute" to the death of a patient, the dead man's widow claimed at an inquest yesterday.
Coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty recorded a verdict of death by medical misadventure in the case of Ross Elliott (59), of Grange Manor Avenue, Rathfarnham, Dublin.
Maureen Elliott told Dublin County Coroner's Court yesterday that she tried in vain to get staff at the hospital to assess her husband as she watched him deteriorate following an operation but "I felt we were being ignored".
Mrs Elliott said she felt "that mismanagement at the hospital from the weekend of May 26th onward helped contribute to my husband's death".
Mr Elliott died at the hospital on May 31st last year after an emergency operation to remove blood clots from his bladder, which followed an operation three days earlier on a tumour on his bladder.
Robert Flynn, consultant urologist at the hospital, told the court that over the weekend after the first operation the on-call medical registrar should have called him as Mr Elliott was in pain and clots may have begun to develop. "Yes, I should have been called in to assess him," he told the court.
Mr Flynn saw the patient the next day and identified that clots had developed. After draining fluid from the bladder, he decided to proceed with an emergency operation. "Until I saw him on Monday morning, no one had documented that he was in clot retention. He was not in clot retention when I saw him on Saturday morning."
Mr Flynn said he was aware that the man's wife had tried in vain to alert nursing staff that she was very concerned about her husband's condition. "We certainly feel they weren't listening to what she was saying," he said.
Over the weekend after his first operation, Mrs Elliott said her husband lost nine pints of blood, was in severe pain and parts of his body turned blue. "I know if the consultant had been contacted, Ross would be here today. I kept saying to staff that Ross was a very sick man. The staff, I felt, would not listen to me," she said.
The on-call medical registrar who saw the patient the day before Mr Flynn identified the blood clots made only one note on his medical chart. "In an ideal world there would be more note-taking," Mr Flynn said, adding that it was "unfortunate" more was not documented that day on his medical chart.
Mrs Elliott told the court that the medical registrar only assessed her husband once that day. Mr Flynn agreed that the patient should have been assessed more than once.
Mr Elliott suffered a stroke affecting his speech the year before so his wife communicated for him with hospital staff. "I knew by the expression on his face that he was in a lot of pain. He was trying to tell me something but he couldn't get the words out," she said.
He made quite a good recovery after the second operation but suddenly deteriorated and died two days later from a cardiac-related event, pathologist Dr Ciara Barrett said.