AN ELDERLY patient at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital was left for an entire bank holiday Monday without a visit from a doctor even though he was vomiting “faecal” matter and his family were pleading with staff to get him medical help.
Joseph Whitney (68), a father of five from Howth, died several days later. That was in August 2003 but it has taken until now for his family to secure an apology from the hospital.
Mr Whitney had undergone surgery for oesophageal cancer when complications set in. In its letter to the family, the hospital now says the difficulty was that the surgical team on duty that weekend was not the team that operated on Mr Whitney and therefore their understanding of his condition “may not have always been clear”.
It also said the hospital acknowledged that when the family expressed anxieties about their father on Monday August 4th, 2003, a clinical review of his condition by the surgical team rostered would have been appropriate. Instead a nurse contacted a doctor on the phone only.
“On behalf of the hospital I acknowledge that he should have been medically reviewed on this day and I sincerely apologise for this,” Beaumont chief executive Liam Duffy wrote. “I give you my assurance that your case has been thoroughly reviewed and the failings that occurred have been acknowledged by the hospital and staff alike,” he added.
Elaine Whitney, a daughter of the dead man, said yesterday it was only after the intervention of Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly that the apology was secured.
She explained that her father, a fitter, was never sick or in hospital in his life until he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in March 2003. He underwent surgery at Beaumont in July 2003 and almost two weeks after his operation, he was looking forward to going home when he became violently ill. The family believe a “mechanical blockage” in his system was causing him to vomit faecal matter but this was not initially considered to be his problem. The hospital thought he had the winter vomiting virus.
Ms Whitney said her father had to be admitted to intensive care on Tuesday, August 5th, when staff returned after the “nightmare” holiday weekend. He died on August 15th, 2003.
Some weeks after his death, he received a letter from the hospital to attend for an appointment. A request by his family for his medical records was initially refused by the hospital. The hospital eventually agreed to an independent review of the case in 2004 but the review panel took three years to produce a report.
While Ms Whitney says it made some worthwhile recommendations, she felt it failed to take on board many of the family’s concerns. The report did, however, acknowledge there were “no medical notes for August 4th” and that there should be a formal “handover” of cases from a treating consultant to an on-call consultant after patients underwent complex surgery.
Feeling a number of issues had still been left unaddressed by the hospital and the HSE in 2008, the family went to the Ombudsman. In a letter to the family, Ms O’Reilly said she was “disheartened” it had taken so long for the serious concerns they had raised to be adequately addressed.
Ms Whitney said the family initially contemplated legal action but dropped it when the Ombudsman said she would investigate.
“We only wanted answers and to understand how a human being in hospital could be treated so badly,” she said.