Irish Examiner view: Catalogue of tragic shortcomings at Limerick hospital

Full-scale public inquiry into all aspects of management and funding at UL Hospitals Group must take place

Roland Doherty, husband of the deceased Susan Doherty, with her mother, Sheila Moloney and brother Rob Moloney at Limerick Coroners Court. 

The monarch who was given such a memorable send-off in London on Monday had her own phrase for troubled times. She suffered, she said, an “annus horribilis” 30 years ago.

For the UL Hospitals Group and, in particular, University Hospital Limerick, 2022 can be represented as a horrible year as further news emerges of shortcomings in protecting people entrusted to their care.

On Monday, an inquest was told of a “systems failure” when a mother, an in-patient, bled to death after presenting with a low white blood cell count, sore throat, and high temperature.

Doctors requested an urgent scan of the abdomen and pelvis of Susan Doherty, 47, after she complained of severe pain in her chest. But this was not followed up and by the time she received the urgent CT scan, nearly 24 hours later, she had suffered a cardiac arrest. She died from a massive bleed to her spleen.

While the case, for which the UL Hospitals Group has issued an “unreserved apology” took place two years ago, 11 recommendations made by an internal review have still to be implemented, the inquest heard.

The patient was not monitored according to the hospital’s protocols, said a witness, and the ward was short-staffed. Coroner John McNamara said it appeared there was a conflict between clinicians working on the frontline of the hospital and that there were capacity and access issues “at the heart” of Ms Doherty’s death.

It is another sorry episode for a hospital that has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons this year.

In the summer, a report from Hiqa, the independent authority that exists to improve health and social care services for the people of Ireland, identified one patient who waited on a trolley for 116 hours. A second took more than 85 hours to receive treatment, and the delay for a third was 71 hours. One patient who required an angiogram, a relatively straightforward process, waited for 45 hours. It should normally be carried out within six hours.

We described these findings as a denial of patient dignity and confidentiality and noted that the results from this hospital had been uniformly and consistently unsatisfactory.

This is before we even consider the suspension of home birthing in the midwest this summer following the tragic death of Laura Liston who died after giving birth to her first child, a son named Shay, in Croom, Co Limerick, on June 5. On that occasion another external review was commissioned including midwifery and obstetrics experts to look at “patient safety, clinical governance, and any other issues arising”.

It is, perhaps, a sad fact that, notwithstanding the commitment and dedication of hard-pressed staff on hospital wards, a full-scale public inquiry needs to take place into all aspects of management, and funding, at the UL Hospitals Group. The catalogue of shortcomings shows no sign of concluding.