The Southern Health and Social Care Trust Urology Services Inquiry Report has now been published.
Urology assesses, diagnoses and treats diseases of the kidney, bladder, prostate and reproductive organs.
The 2020 Inquiry was set up following a series of Serious Adverse Incidents involving now retired Consultant Urologist, Aidan O’Brien, at the Southern Health and Social Care Trust. The records of more than 1,000 patients under the care of Mr O’Brien were recalled.
The Urology Services Inquiry considered Mr O’Brien’s clinical practice as well as the Southern Health and Social Care Trust’s handing of Urology services. The Inquiry found, as noted in its press release accompanying the report, there was both a failure of “individual responsibility” as well as “systemic failures”.
Chair of the Inquiry, Christine Smith KC, has said that Mr O’Brien “did not set out to cause harm”, however the Trust “failed to recognise that he was a doctor in difficulty and failed to manage him appropriately”.
It transpires that concerns about Mr O’Brien’s clinical management were known for many years before 2016. Some of those concerns included triage delays, record-keeping failures, storage of patient notes at home, delayed dictation, non-standard prescribing as well as other clinical and administrative concerns.
Christine Smith KC indicated that patients were “badly let down”, having faced “delays in diagnosis and treatment including cancer care, poor communication an too often they were left without the clear high-quality, timely intervention they should have expected”.
The Inquiry “makes clear that the deeper causes were systemic” with contributors being “weak governance, poor oversight, ineffective escalation and underdeveloped leadership created the conditions in which patients were seriously harmed”.
Commenting on the Urology Services Inquiry Report, Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has said “for the second time in less than a working week I find myself having to offer an unconditional apology for something that has gone incredibly badly wrong in health care delivery”, adding “this was a failure of monumental size”.
Against the backdrop of the Muckamore Abbey Hospital Inquiry Report publication last week, O‘Reilly Stewart Solicitors welcome the findings in the Urology Services Inquiry Report and would reiterate the calls for implementation of the recommendations made in both reports on behalf existing of clients of this office as well as for the prevention of future unnecessary harm caused to patients in our healthcare system.
If you have a query you wish to raise with our Healthcare Team, please contact us on 028 90 321 000 or info@oreillystewart.com