Standing up for your rights is worth the battle
FIVE years on from the first time it grabbed national attention, the Rebecca O’Malley case continues to be a touchstone for any discussion over the state of the Irish health service.
However, after yesterday’s High Court settlement, it can now equally be seen as confirmation that standing up for your rights is worth the battle, regardless of how unlikely success might seem.
In May 2007, the now 46-year-old went public with every family’s worst nightmare.
Despite being given a breast cancer all-clear in March 2005 after a biopsy was taken at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick and checked at Cork University Hospital, she was sent for another test.
Her GP was still concerned, after finding a persistent thickening lump on her breast, 14 months after she was told there was nothing wrong.
During this second examination, it emerged she had been misdiagnosed and needed an immediate mastectomy which, if the initial error did not occur, was likely to have been unnecessary.
Due to the urgency involved, she dismissed talk of needing to wait a month for the operation and underwent the procedure privately in Britain.
After recovering from the ordeal, and after failing to receive assurances that the scandal could not happen again, she went public with her story in May 2007.
The result was public outrage, the emergence of a series of other previously unknown breast cancer misdiagnoses, and — ultimately — an independent health service investigation which forced improvements in cancer care.
Ms O’Malley’s case led the newly established Health Information and Quality Authority to examine 24 other diagnoses at the facilities between Jan 2005 and May 2007.
While no additional mistakes were uncovered, in the months that followed the revelations surrounding her care, Hiqa also began a review of pathology services at University Hospital Galway, where a woman was twice wrongly given a breast cancer all-clear.
A similar scandal also emerged at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise, while other concerns were also uncovered at Barrington’s private hospital in Limerick and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Co Louth.
The result of this cluster of previously unstated cases was ultimately a major beefing up — at least on paper — of breast cancer diagnosis cases, and a long-running national debate on the likelihood of a misdiagnosis involved in this condition.
None of it would have been possible without the decision of Ms O’Malley and her family to stand up for their rights.
Yesterday’s High Court apology and undisclosed settlement to Ms O’Malley is in many ways far more than just a full stop at the end of one of the first cases to rock the HSE to its core.
It is both the final, long-fought justification for a mother of three who chose to go public with her personal nightmare to help make sure it did not happen to anyone else — and, vitally, the chance to change Ireland’s medical negligence system for the better.
Speaking after the High Court settlement, the cancer survivor revealed the torment her family has faced since 2006.
She was equally critical of the medical negligence system which they were forced to go through to win their battle.
“The present [medical negligence] system is uncaring, hugely expensive, stressful and time consuming. Furthermore, it harms the patient at least twice over [than the initial condition].
“I fear that many patients who survive medical errors will not have sufficient strength or stamina to take on the might of a major public body with their seemingly endless resources.
“I take it [the apology] as a positive sign the HSE may now be changing its approach to how it deals with those it has harmed. But they have a long way to go on that journey,” she said.
After six years of a personal crisis, five years of invasive but necessary national attention, and four years of an energy-sapping legal battle, ensuring the ongoing improvement in cancer and an equally important development in medical negligence cases is the least the O’Malleys deserve.
