Neary scandal could occur again, warns inquiry judge
Judge Maureen Harding Clarke, who compiled the 354-page report on Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, where obstetrician Dr Michael Neary carried out unnecessary hysterectomies over a 25-year period, insisted hospital standards had to improve all round.
While she found many of her recommendations had been embraced by senior midwives and by consultants at the hospital, she had also noticed there was a huge deficit in lay management.
What, she asked, was the point of regulating obstetricians and gynaecologists if there was not an equivalent assessment of the skills and work practices of the non-medical people who make up the health service?
“What happened in Lourdes Hospital before could be replicated in many other hospitals if the circle is not closed,” the judge warned at a conference in Dublin on the regulation of healthcare professionals. “The standards have to rise all round.”
She said all hospital workers, from porters to receptionists, had to be subject to audit and complaint.
The judge noted Dr Neary was perceived by his peers as being a knowledgeable and competent consultant. Most of the time he was unofficial spokesperson for the maternity unit.
It was Dr Neary who took the trouble to write letters when something had to be done. It was he who went to the health board begging, cajoling and beseeching the authority for new equipment and he who filled in the annual data.
The consultant did a great deal of the work — he was no shirker.
Judge Harding Clarke said the most shocking finding was Dr Neary’s peers, the consultants who worked with him, did not recognise his flawed judgment. There was no question of whistleblowers being silenced because nobody had any concerns.
