MOST BUT not all of the recommendations made by a review group established by the HSE to look into the circumstances surrounding the death of Tania McCabe have now been implemented, the inquest heard.
Adrienne Egan, counsel for Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, where Ms McCabe died in March 2007, told the inquest into her death in Ardee, Co Louth, yesterday that the hospital accepted in full the 27 recommendations of the review group.
She said most of the recommendations were already implemented or in the process of being implemented. "We accept that this is a tragic event . . . one that is deeply regretted by all," she said. The hospital, she said, extended its deepest sympathy to the dead woman's family.
Stephen Mulvaney, hospital network manager for the HSE northeast region, gave evidence that it was the intention of the HSE to implement all the recommendations in the review group's report. He said some were resource- dependent and some were not.
Asked by the Louth coroner Ronan Maguire how many of the recommendations had been implemented, he said: "I don't have the details of how many are implemented."
Asked by Bruce Antoniotti, counsel for the McCabe family, if a system was in place to ensure that a patient's file was now available to all those treating a patient, he said: "I'm not aware of where that recommendation is at."
He pointed out that he had only been called to the inquest 15 minutes earlier to give assurances that the report would be implemented, but had he known he would be giving detailed evidence he would have looked into where the recommendations were at. He said the hospital now had a microbiologist and more midwives.
Ms Egan said she had gone through all the recommendations with a member of the hospital's staff and had been assured most were implemented. But she said meeting the need for better anaesthetic cover depended on resources coming through.
Barbara Corcoran, the mother of Tania McCabe, said it was "a very sad thing for women" that it had taken this amount of time to put the recommendations in place. The measures recommended should have been put in place years ago, she said. Breaking down, she described what happened to her daughter as a "nightmare" and said she hoped it would never happen to anyone else.
Earlier, she recalled how she had spent "a happy time" the Monday before Tania died shopping with her in Dundrum, Dublin, looking at prams and baby clothes. They had also gone to see a site where Tania and her husband, Aidan, planned to build a house.
Three days later, when she got word Tania was having an emergency section, she drove to the hospital, arriving about 1.30am. She was alarmed when she arrived as Tania was highly agitated and slurring her words.
After her daughter's death she said: "When we finally got to visit Tania in the operating theatre it looked like an abattoir to me. There was blood everywhere . . . Tania was still strapped to the operating table . . . it was a horrible vista and I will never forget the appalling sight of my precious daughter left in this condition."