A JUNIOR doctor had at least 30 minutes to prepare to operate on a child who needed to have a kidney removed, the consultant who asked him to carry out the operation has claimed.
Prof Martin Corbally, the most senior paediatric surgeon at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, told a Medical Council fitness-to-practise inquiry yesterday that suggestions Dr Sri Paran had just five minutes to prepare for the surgery were wrong.
“I think Mr Paran had adequate time to prepare for the case,” he said. He delegated the operation to Dr Paran as he was close to becoming a consultant – he has since been given a consultant post in Crumlin – and it was well within his competence to remove the child’s kidney, he added.
However the wrong kidney was removed from the child in March 2008 and both doctors are now before the inquiry, facing allegations of professional misconduct.
Prof Corbally admitted he pointed to where the incision should be made on the child’s left side before surgery, when it was his right kidney that was to have been removed, but said it was up to the operating surgeon to review the child’s X-rays before proceeding with surgery. He said it would only take one or two minutes to review the X-rays.
“I do accept responsibility as the admitting consultant but I do feel individuals who work with you have to bear responsibility for their own action,” he said. He also said he could not accept responsibility for systems failures in the hospital that had been highlighted again and again, such as delays with the filing of X-ray reports.
Counsel for the Medical Council Patrick Leonard put it to him if it only took a few minutes he should have looked at the X-rays himself. “I really wish I had . . . but I was convinced that Mr Paran would do this and do it well,” he replied.
When Charles Meenan SC, for Dr Paran, put it to him that his client had just five minutes to prepare for surgery and was not in a position to say no to the task, Prof Corbally said he could start the operation in his own time once he was happy everything was in place. He added that Dr Paran was happy to proceed with the operation when he asked him to do it.
Meanwhile Prof Corbally said when he went to meet the child’s parents to inform them of the blunder he did not tell them Dr Paran had carried out the operation. He said as admitting consultant it was his responsibility to speak to the parents and apologise and he did not want to apportion blame. “I wasn’t hiding it. There was a very distraught situation, very disturbing for everyone involved,” he said.
It was only when Dr Paran himself spoke to the parents days later that they learned Prof Corbally had not performed the surgery.
Asked by Mr Leonard if he should have been more upfront, Prof Corbally said: “That may have been a better option.”
When the case began in May, the boy’s mother, Jennifer Stewart, said it really upset her and the boy’s father, Oliver Conroy, further when they learned Prof Corbally had not conducted the operation. She added their son had “done much better than expected” and was now attending school, but they “worry each day” about when he’s going to need dialysis and a transplant. “We are just living day by day,” she said.
Dr Paran is expected to give evidence today, when the case is due to conclude.