A woman who nursed her profoundly mentally and physically handicapped son for 20 years has settled an action for alleged medical negligence against St James's Hospital, Dublin.
After her action had been struck out in the Circuit Civil Court yesterday, Mrs Mary Rawlins, of Bancroft Avenue, Tallaght, Dublin, said she had received an apology in the corridor outside the courtroom from a senior representative of St James's.
"This apology has been something I have been insisting on. I have been waiting four years for it," Mrs Rawlins said. She said that when settlement negotiations threatened to break down the hospital's representative had travelled to the court especially to apologise.
St James's Hospital had entered a full denial and defence to Mrs Rawlins's claim for up to £30,000 damages for alleged medical negligence in the treatment of her 23-year-old son, Kevin, who died in the hospital on September 18th, 1993.
When the proceedings were called before Judge Kevin Haugh yesterday, Mr John Hanlon, counsel for Mrs Rawlins, said they had been reduced to "assessment only" status. He was granted an adjournment to facilitate negotiations.
Mrs Rawlins, in her claim, said her son had been admitted to St James's to have his stomach feed tube replaced by a newer model. Later that day the new tube became blocked, and despite further treatment her son had died the following day.
On November 2nd, 1995, in the Dublin Coroner's Court, a jury found that Kevin had died from shock and septicaemia resulting from perforation of the stomach complicated by aspiration pneumonitis of the right lung.
The jury, which returned a verdict of death by misadventure, found the gastric perforation resulted from the insertion of a gastrostomy tube at St James's Hospital the day before his death.