Registrar tells inquiry she cannot recall note being left on patient’s chart

A FORMER registrar at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda has told a Medical Council fitness to practise inquiry she cannot recall a note left on a chart to ensure a biopsy was conducted on a woman who died from cancer.

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.