A LIMERICK SOLICITOR who acted for a family in the heartbreaking case of their stillborn daughter has said that the new Patient Safety Bill does not go far enough.
Rachael O’Shaugnessy, who is a partner with HOMS Assist, told the Limerick Post that the legislation, which is currently before the Dail, demands full disclosure between medics, patients and their families.
However it doesn’t allow for an admission of failure by a doctor or medic to avoid the trauma of having to go court.
Earlier this month, Rebecca and Tom Collins from Carrigaholt in West Clare settled their case against the HSE and University Maternity Hospital Limerick following the stillbirth of their daughter Hannah for an undisclosed amount.
The settlement came about quite literally on the steps of the Four Courts in Dublin and was ratified by the judge who was preparing to hear the case.
When Rebecca’s waters broke on St Stephen’s Day in 2007, she remembers feeling “safe in the hands of the doctors”.
She says that that trust haunts her to this day.
She was admitted to the then St Munchin’s Maternity Hospital Limerick to be monitored by cardiotocography (CTG) to check the baby’s heartbeat.
Two days later, on what was to be Hannah’s due date, it was tragically discovered that the baby had passed away while Rebecca was a patient on the prenatal ward.
After Hannah died, Rebecca was told that there was a knot in the umbilical cord and “it was one of those things, a rare case”, she says.
The couple were left for the next 15 years with unanswered questions – why and how did it happen, could it have been prevented, could their daughter have been saved?
In 2015, Rebecca saw a television programme where a similar case was described and failings in CTG monitoring were identified. This sparked her fight for an inquiry into what really happened to her baby.
In May 2017, Rebecca finally discovered that the CTG monitoring had shown signs of distress the day before Hannah died, which were not identified or managed.
“The family will never get over the loss of their daughter but because they didn’t have all the information, they couldn’t grieve in a timely way,” Ms O’Shaughnessy said.
“When they discovered there was more to it than the hospital were telling them, they were thrown right back into their pain and grief and then there was a fight to get an enquiry.”
“The new legislation means that people must be told what medical staff know and in the event of something like this happening, there will automatically be an inquiry. But the fact that something happened, even if a doctor makes an admission and tenders an apology, does not automatically mean liability.
“Patients and families will still have to go to court with all of the stress that that entails and these cases are often settled.”
Ms O’Shaugnessy maintains that the failure to identify that a CTG had been misinterpreted and that Hannah’s death should have been avoided meant that there was failure in the hospital’s duty of candour to Rebecca.
She also says there was no explanation or apology for the midwifery error given at the time or at the postnatal review.
“Rebecca and Tom Collins deeply hope that the Patient Safety Bill will be passed into law as quickly as possible. They hope that in some way their daughter’s death was not in vain and they truly hope no other family will have to suffer as they have,” said Rachael.
