THE MEDICAL Council has set aside a decision it made to find a Dublin-based consultant obstetrician guilty of professional misconduct.
The Irish Times understands its decision to row back on its finding against Dr Bernard Stuart of the Coombe Women’s Hospital was made at its last meeting and was based on legal advice.
Dr Stuart, along with two other Dublin based obstetricians Prof Walter Prendiville and Dr John Murphy, had been found guilty of professional misconduct last year arising out of reports they prepared in 1998 exonerating the former Drogheda obstetrician Dr Michael Neary.
Their reports were prepared in haste after reviewing patient records presented to them by Dr Neary. However, a UK physician, who later reviewed the same case notes, expressed serious concerns about Dr Neary’s practice and Dr Neary was subsequently struck off the medical register over the unnecessary removal of the wombs of 10 patients.
The Lourdes Hospital Inquiry report – which looked at how Dr Neary could have been allowed to carry out so many Caesarean hysterectomies over many years without anyone intervening – was published in 2006. After this, Patient Focus, which represented women damaged by Dr Neary, made a formal complaint to the Medical Council about the role in the whole affair played by the three Dublin based obstetricians.
After its inquiry the Medical Council found the three of them guilty of professional misconduct early in 2007.
Prof Prendiville and Dr Murphy sought a judicial review of the finding against them in the High Court and in December last year Mr Justice Peter Kelly ruled that the council’s findings of professional misconduct against them were unlawful.
The judge strongly criticised the handling of the case by the Medical Council and its fitness to practise committee. He said the fitness to practise committee had left the doctors “absolutely in the dark” as to the basis of its findings.
The Medical Council met in January this year to consider the ruling and opted not to appeal it to the Supreme Court. It also began at that stage to reconsider its finding of professional misconduct against Dr Stuart, who had not gone to the High Court.
It was decided that if a similar finding against his two colleagues had been described as “unlawful” in the High Court, it had no option but to set aside the finding it had made against Dr Stuart. The finding of misconduct will therefore be erased from his file.
The Medical Council made no official comment on the decision.