Obstetrician guilty of professional misconduct

A consultant obstetrician who failed to send a patient with a potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy for treatment has been found guilty of professional misconduct.

Dr Patrick (Gerry) Rafferty, of Mount Carmel private hospital, Dublin 14 was found guilty of five separate allegations of professional misconduct by a Medical Council inquiry in relation to his treatment of two women.

One of the women had to be rushed to hospital for emergency surgery to remove her fallopian tube.

She made a complaint “so the same thing never happens to another woman”.

He denied all but one of the allegations against him but the fitness to practise committee stated that it found Dr Rafferty’s evidence to be “inconsistent and lacking in credibility in significant respects”.

It also raised concerns about surgeries he carried out at Mount Carmel without the aid of another surgeon or a surgical nurse.

The inquiry chairman Danny O’Hare stated that if the practice were continuing in Mount Carmel, “then any surgeon observing that protocol could be putting patients in danger.”

During the hearing, Michelle Howe told of how less than 24 hours after she was assured by Dr Rafferty her pregnancy was “non-continuing” but not ectopic, her husband had to rush her to hospital where she underwent an emergency salpingectomy to remove a section of her fallopian tube.

An ectopic pregnancy is where an embryo develops outside of the womb.

Ms Howe told the inquiry that the following day, Dr Rafferty “came in and sat down” and said, “so it was an ectopic pregnancy”.

She said he then told her that “the outcome would have been the same”.

“I told him I wouldn’t have had to have emergency surgery and a blood transfusion… my life had been put at risk and a lot of stuff was avoidable,” she said.

The inquiry ruled that four allegations in relation to Dr Rafferty’s treatment of Ms Howe were proven as to fact and constituted professional misconduct.

The committee found one allegation in relation to another patient, Cathy Coyle, was proven as to fact and constituted professional misconduct. This was that he failed to refer her to a urologist following tests which showed her kidney was not functioning properly.

The tests were carried out after a hysterectomy Dr Rafferty performed on Ms Coyle in Jul 2007, during which she sustained damage to her ureter, a tube linking the kidneys to the bladder.

The following year, a urologist at St James’s Hospital discovered that her one of her kidneys had permanently ceased functioning.

The decision will now be forwarded to the board of the Medical Council which will decide on what sanction to impose on Dr Rafferty.