‘Investigate doctor who failed our little boy’
Jean and Stephen Nowlan yesterday received an undisclosed High Court settlement and an apology from Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, more than seven years after the death of their little boy, Pierce.
However, in a statement, they criticised the “wall of silence” and the “culture of denial” they said they had to face from the hospital.
They also said they would complain to the Medical Council about the senior doctor at the centre of the case.
Consultant paediatric surgeon Professor Martin Corbally is currently on sabbatical from Crumlin and is involved in setting up a hospital in Bahrain.
In 2010, he was investigated and cleared of professional misconduct by the Medical Council after a young boy in his care had a healthy kidney removed and was left with a diseased one in a mix-up over which organ was for removal.
In the case settled yesterday, the hospital said it “deeply regrets and apologises” to the Nowlans for the failures in Pierce’s care.
It said: “The hospital acknowledges that the care which was afforded to Pierce was, in many respects, not as it should have been and not as Pierce or his parents were entitled to expect.”
Pierce Nowlan, who had haemophilia, was brought to the hospital in Oct 2004 for surgery to insert a canula in his vein so that his parents could administer a clotting agent to him at home.
His inquest in 2006 heard that an attempt to use a chest vein failed, so a vein in his neck was used. However, there was contradictory evidence about which doctors, if any, realised that the first attempt had punctured his vein.
He bled internally for some time before concerns were raised and despite transfusions, suffered a heart attack and lack of oxygen to the brain and died three days later.
The Nowlans’ fight to learn the truth of what happened helped change the law as, under the legislation then in place, they were allowed have just two medical witnesses give evidence to the inquest when 23 had attended to their son.
