Registrar tells inquiry she cannot recall note being left on patient’s chart
Dr Rukhsana Majeed, who worked as a registrar in the hospital’s obstetrics and gynaecology department in 2008, said she never came across the note from the woman’s consultant, Dr Etop Akpan, in February 2008, asking her to follow up on his request to radiology for a CT guided biopsy — a way of obtaining a small piece of tissue from an areas that looks potentially abnormal.
Sharon McEneaney, from Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, was 29 when she first attended the hospital in October 2007 complaining of severe abdominal pain. She had to wait nine months before a cancer diagnosis was made in July 2008 and died in April 2009. She only had a biopsy carried out after the intervention of former TD Rory O’Hanlon in late June 2008.
Dr Akpan has had 38 allegations of professional misconduct and/or professional poor professional performance brought against him by the Medical Council.
The case has also been the subject of a HSE review that has yet to be made public.
After seeing Ms McEneaney in February 2008, Dr Akpan claims he directed Dr Majeed to follow up on his request for a CT guided biopsy to be carried out on her. He said it was done by way of a note on the cover of Ms McEneaney’s chart.
Dr Majeed, now a registrar in Cavan General Hospital, told the inquiry she had no recollection of the note and that she had never seen Ms McEneaney.
Earlier, consultant radiologist at the hospital, Dr Deirdre Lynch, said there was only one sonographer working at the hospital in 2008 when there should have been “four or five”.
Dr Lynch said she believed an ultrasound was carried out on Ms McEneaney in April 2008 on foot of a request made when the woman was seen at the hospital in November 2007 and that the request should have been cancelled. It had been prioritised at level two, meaning the patient needed the ultrasound within two weeks. At the time the waiting period was six months.
