THERE WAS a “skeleton staff” on duty at Our Lady’s children’s hospital in Crumlin, Dublin, on the day a wrong kidney was removed from a young boy, a Medical Council fitness to practise inquiry was told yesterday.
Olive Delaney, a clinical nurse manager at the hospital, said this was because it was Good Friday.
She was giving evidence in a case in which two doctors face allegations of professional misconduct following the removal of a healthy kidney from a now eight-year-old boy. Prof Martin Corbally faces 15 allegations and his surgical registrar Dr Sri Paran 13 allegations of professional misconduct.
The inquiry heard that after internal and external inquiries, the Crumlin hospital board directed its chief executive to make a complaint to the Medical Council.
The allegations faced by Prof Corbally, a consultant general paediatric surgeon, include that he failed to review the child’s scans adequately or at all before scheduling the child for a kidney removal; that he wrongly recorded that the child was due for a left kidney removal; that he delegated the surgery to Dr Paran when he ought to have known he did not have adequate time to prepare.
Dr Paran claims he only knew he was operating on the child after the child was anaesthetised.
Among the allegations faced by Dr Paran are that he failed to review the child adequately or at all before surgery; failed to review radiological images before surgery; failed to inform Prof Corbally of concerns expressed by the child’s parents about the side on which surgery was to proceed; and removed the child’s left kidney in circumstances where he ought to have known he was performing an operation on a healthy kidney.
Nurse Beta Suska said when she was admitting the child to theatre the boy’s mother questioned the site of surgery.
“She was thinking it was a problem with the right kidney,” she said. She brought the concerns to the attention of her nursing line manager Ms Delaney and Dr Paran.
Ms Delaney said when told of the parent’s concerns she asked Dr Paran to talk to the parents.
When she noticed the child’s X-rays were not on his trolley she went to the X-ray department herself to get them as there was only a skeleton staff on.
The inquiry heard when the child was losing more blood than might be expected during the removal of a poorly functioning kidney Prof Corbally was called to theatre. He took a look over Dr Paran’s shoulder, asked for the X-rays and as soon as he looked at them he went to scrub up. It was realised shortly afterwards the wrong kidney had been removed.
“It was really a terrible, terrible incident,” Ms Delaney said.
The inquiry has yet to hear evidence from the two doctors before it but in a statement to the media yesterday Prof Corbally said the error was a source of deep distress and regret to him.
“I again unreservedly offer the patient and family my heartfelt apology for this tragic episode,” he said.
The case, which is expected to run for a number of days, has now adjourned until September.