Consultants complained over A&E, council told

Three Roscommon County Hospital consultants wrote to the HSE in January 2011 warning that they could no longer stand over patient safety because of the hospital’s accident and emergency department.

At the time, there were only “five or six competent junior doctors” out of a staff of 12, one of the consultants told the Medical Council.

Consultant geriatrician Dr Gerry O’Mara described patient safety in Roscommon as being “in a spiral” and “out of control”.

Roscommon’s accident and emergency department was closed in July 2011.

Mr O’Mara said prior to this, it was receiving 1,300 acute admissions per consultant, when the equivalent in University Hospital Galway was 500 or 600.

“In a teaching hospital, everything abnormal would be picked up by the junior staff. By contrast, in Roscommon, at that time, we had five or six competent junior staff, the rest were locums, you would do the ward round the next morning and you would always find something had been missed.”

He added: “I am not directly criticising the juniors, the system was just unsafe. You couldn’t rely on the competence of the work that was being done...”

He said following the closure of the emergency department in July 2011 safety improved and he could now completely stand over patient care safety.

Dr O’Mara was called to give evidence to the Medical Council on behalf of Dr Sardar Ali, consultant in respiratory medicine who faces five allegations of poor professional performance in relation to this handling of a 77-year-old man who died of thrombocytopenia or low blood platelet levels on April 6 2011, three weeks after being admitted with a chest infection to the hospital.

Roy Eyre had been suffering from a list of medical conditions before admission, including type 2 diabetes, moderate to severe kidney disease, a history of brain stroke, arthritis and gout.

Dr Ali denies all five allegations against him.

When asked why there was no record of concern about Mr Eyre’s blood platelet values in the medical notes, Dr Ali said the blood values were not brought to his attention and it was the responsibility of his junior doctor team to do so.

“It just highlights the mess I was working in, looking at this it seems I was the only doctor working there, the others are like not doctors,” he said.

The hearing has been adjourned until April 11.