Harney promise to families of ‘full facts’

FAMILIES of women who died as a result of cancer misdiagnosis will get “the full facts” about what happened to their loved ones, Health Minister Mary Harney has said.

The minister also said the country has to “get away from the blame-culture” in relation to medical mishaps to encourage doctors to report incidents.

“I’ve met doctors that have made mistakes and don’t think that they don’t suffer or have sleepless nights. They do. If a doctor has been the person who has caused the error that led to a tragedy they too have to live with that.

“So we have to work to cerate an environment where errors are reported so we learn from them and minimise the capacity of them happening again,” she said.

Ms Harney was speaking on the Marion Finucane show on RTÉ Radio One about the cases of Ann Moriarty, 53, and Edel Kelly, 26, who died of cancer after being misdiagnosed at Ennis General Hospital

Ms Harney will meet with the family of Ms Kelly, a mother of two, at the Department of Health headquarters today, where she is expected to apologise for the misdiagnosis.

“There’s nobody more than me that wants to ensure that the family of patients who’ve suffered as a result of misdiagnosis where there has been a tragedy should get the full facts and that is happening,” she said.

“In our democracy if there’s a medical error I have to account for it in the parliament, and that is unusual in parliamentary democracies. It’s the way our system functions that people feel they’ve to take it right to the minister,” said Ms Harney.

Also speaking on the programme, chief executive of the Health Service Executive Professor Brendan Drumm, defended the 17,000-strong administrative staff in the organisation. He said this number would be cut by about 1,000 in a redundancy programme and insisted front-line staff would not be targeted.

“The amount of front-line staff we have is actually huge by any international comparisons. We have, in our large hospitals, between 2,500 and 3,500 people working and 95% of those people are doctors, nurses and therapists,” he said.

“There will be a redundancy programme and that will be focused on people who are in backroom structures,” said Prof Drumm.

Ms Harney said: “Since the HSE was established the number of physiotherapists is up by 20%, the number of occupational therapists is up 45%, nurses 8%.”

“The number in administration is down by 10%. The health system has about 16% of its people in administration which is on a par with every other European country. That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement,” she said.