A 58-year-old Connemara woman died when a power failure at Merlin Park Hospital in Galway shut down a ventilator she was attached to and a back-up generator failed to supply emergency power, an inquest heard yesterday.
Mrs Bridget Sullivan, Kilkerrin, Carna, died in the early hours of April 8th last year from respiratory failure after a ventilator which was being used to maintain her breathing suddenly shut down.
She had been admitted to the special care unit, which was on the top floor of the main hospital, two weeks earlier with respiratory problems and renal failure.
A power failure which affected only the main building at 12.05 a.m. was responsible for the ventilator shutdown, and all attempts to resuscitate Mrs Sullivan failed. She died at 1 a.m., 10 minutes before electricians located a tripped switch in the basement of the building and restored power.
The inquest heard that nurses in the special care unit had to work in the dark while trying to resuscitate her because there was no emergency lighting in the entire building. Following Mrs Sullivan's death, the Western Health Board (WHB) commissioned an independent report which stated that every piece of equipment in the hospital, which was built in the early 1950s, was either "inadequate or obsolete" and much of it needed to be replaced.
Mr Padraig Brennan, solicitor for the WHB, told the inquest that measures had now been put in place to deal with such a problem arising again.
Mr John Coyne, head of maintenance at the hospital, said a couple of million pounds would have to be spent upgrading Merlin Park Hospital.
The inquest was told that On April 6th Mrs Sullivan's daughters were notified that she would not be resuscitated in the event of her condition deteriorating. Mary Teresa Sullivan said the family was shocked when they heard after her death that the decision had been made without their consent. They were also upset that staff did not allow them to be with their mother as she was dying.
The coroner, Dr Ciaran MacLoughlin, said a protocol should be put in place nationally which doctors would have to adhere to in such cases.
After hearing evidence from the maintenance staff and Dr Charles Connolly, pathologist, the jury returned a unanimous verdict that Mrs Sullivan died from pneumonia, which caused acute respiratory failure. A contributing factor was the fact that the ventilator failed to work, causing respiratory arrest.