BREAST CANCER misdiagnosis victim Rebecca O’Malley has strongly criticised the chief executive of the HSE, Prof Brendan Drumm, and reiterated her belief that he should consider his position.
In an address to the Irish Nurses’ Organisation annual conference yesterday, she also underlined the need for legislation to be introduced requiring mandatory reporting of medical errors and potentially unsafe situations.
She said she was saddened and angered by the “climate of fear” which hinders nurses from speaking out on behalf of their patients, adding that the “prevailing culture” of our health services needs to change.
She revealed that Prof Drumm had yet properly to respond to a letter from her over three weeks ago seeking details of the implementation of key recommendations arising out of a landmark report into her case.
“I think he has to ask himself if he is the person who is going to drive through the culture change that is required,” she said.
Ms O’Malley accused Prof Drumm of utilising the “dark arts of propaganda and PR spin” in relation to the recent Health Information Quality Authority (HIQA) report into her case.
She said the information about the implementation of the report’s 15 key recommendations is of “crucial interest . . . so why withhold it?”
She noted that the HSE said in a press release last April that some of the report’s recommendations had already been implemented.
But the lack of a response by Prof Drumm to her query as to when and which of the report’s recommendations had been implemented was “a most unsatisfactory situation”, she said.
The attempt by Prof Drumm to turn the HIQA report into a “good news story” – Prof Drumm welcomed the fact that only one diagnosis had been missed – represented a “sad flight from reality” and demonstrated “the culture of spin and the lack of openness, honesty and transparency that exists within our healthcare system”.
On this occasion, Prof Drumm “missed a golden opportunity to demonstrate to all within his organisation that there has to be a new way forward – the way of truth and openness”.
Ms O’Malley had a mastectomy after wrongly being given the all-clear in 2005. Her case caused a national outcry and prompted an inquiry by the HIQA.
