‘Nothing will ever bring our son back’

The country’s main children’s hospital has apologised to the parents of a two-year-old boy who died in its care after a routine surgical procedure went wrong.

Pierce Nowlan, from Saggart, Co Dublin, suffered massive blood loss, a heart attack and brain damage at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, on his second birthday in Oct 2004 after an artery in his chest was accidentally punctured.

The boy, who was known by the hospital to have haemophilia, bled internally for some time before medical staff discovered there was a problem. Efforts to save him failed and he was declared brain dead three days later.

Settling a High Court case for damages taken by his parents, Stephen and Jean Nowlan, the hospital said it greatly regretted the “huge trauma and suffering” caused to the Nowlan family by the death of their son.

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. The hospital deeply regrets and apologises to Mr and Mrs Nowlan and their family for the failures in the care of Pierce.”

Reading their own statement outside the court after accepting the undisclosed settlement, Mrs Nowlan recalled the battle she and her husband had endured to get to the truth of what had happened to Pierce.

They began a campaign to change the law after finding at his inquest in 2006 that they were restricted to calling two medical witnesses to give evidence despite the fact that 23 medical staff attended to their son and there were contradictions in the various accounts they had been given.

“We had one question for the medical staff involved in his care which was — how did this happen? It has taken seven years, a High Court action and the Coroner’s Act to be amended to finally get the answer, an admission of liability and an apology,” said Mrs Nowlan.

“As grieving parents, we should not have had to meet a wall of silence and a culture of denial from the hospital. We put our trust in the hospital and they failed us and our son Pierce.

“Nothing will ever bring our son back and we will miss him every day for the rest of our lives. But if the hospital has learned that it needs to improve its procedures and how it provides information to grieving families, at least something positive will come out of this terrible tragedy.”

Pierce was the Nowlan’s only child at the time of his death. The couple now have a little girl who is aged two.

They were accustomed to bringing Pierce to Crumlin for treatments relating to his haemophilia and the procedure he had prior to his death was to insert an “im plantofix” canula device into a vein so that they could administer clotting agent to him at home.

His inquest heard an attempt to use a vein in his chest failed so a neck vein was used instead but doctors either did not realise, or failed to pass on the information to follow-up care staff, that the first attempt had punctured his chest vein. He bled internally with fatal consequences.