Twitter users ‘perceived Irish maternity services unsafe’

Governance of the entire Irish maternity service was called into question on Twitter in the aftermath of an RTÉ programme examining perinatal deaths at the Midlands Regional Hospital in Portlaoise.

Analysis of Twitter activity over a two-month period from the time Fatal Failures was aired on RTÉ’s Primetime on January 30, 2014, found tweeters “perceived the Irish maternity services as unsafe”.

In fact the researchentitled Reaction on Twitter to a Cluster of Perinatal Deaths: A mixed method study identified “such a level of dissatisfaction with the governance that a demand for a criminal investigation was called for”.