WRITER NELL McCafferty has asked Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital to explain what right one of its neurosurgeons had to refuse her treatment after she was “terse” with some staff.
She was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm in May after she visited her GP complaining of pains in her neck. She was sent for an MRI scan and the doctor who interpreted it recommended “urgent referral” to a neurosurgeon.
She was referred to consultant neurosurgeon Chris Pidgeon at Beaumont and in mid-July, after an angiogram at the hospital, she received a letter noting her first consultation with Dr Pidgeon would be on September 16th.
Concerned at the waiting time, given that her aunt had died of a brain aneurysm and her brother had suffered paralysis as a result of the condition, she phoned the hospital. She said she wanted to ask Dr Pidgeon whether she could take a flight while waiting for her operation. She also wanted to ask whether the fact that her appointment had not been scheduled for some weeks meant her condition was not life-threatening.
Ms McCafferty claims she reached his secretary’s answering machine on several occasions and while waiting for an answer she phoned the VHI 24-hour helpline and was told to try one of the junior doctors in neurosurgery at Beaumont.
A junior doctor took note of her questions and returned her call in 10 minutes, saying she could fly and that her pre-operative consultation with Dr Pidgeon had been brought forward to August 5th. He told her to confirm the appointment with Dr Pidgeon’s secretary.
While Ms McCafferty has private health insurance, she was being treated as a public patient in this instance.
She says she spoke to Dr Pidgeon’s private secretary and was told to phone his public secretary, which she did. There was some chat about how long it took her to get through, and the secretary, Ms McCafferty claims, told her she was forgetting Dr Pidgeon was doing her a favour by seeing her so soon as a public patient. Ms McCafferty says she told the secretary this was no way to speak to a patient. When she arrived for her appointment on August 5th, she was shocked to discover the appointment had been cancelled. A letter to this effect had been posted to her but she had not received it.
The letter was from Dr Pidgeon, who said he had received complaints from his public and private secretaries about her rudeness over the telephone. “In particular, I understand that you reduced my public secretary, who is heavily pregnant, to tears. On inquiring further I am told you used abusive language to the neurosurgical admissions office in Beaumont Hospital, and also created difficulties on having an angiogram,’’ he wrote.
“You will appreciate that neither I nor my staff are prepared to tolerate abusive and bullying behaviour of this type. I am therefore declining the referral and suggest you seek another neurosurgeon.”
Ms McCafferty said she was “terse” with staff because she was anxious about her condition. But she now questions what authority a doctor has to refuse to see a patient with a serious condition on the basis of second-hand information about her behaviour, without referring her to an alternative neurosurgeon.
She wrote a long letter to Dr Pidgeon outlining her side of the story. He replied saying he had declined to accept her as a patient and therefore had no medical obligation to her. “You are simply not a patient of mine. I advised you, correctly, that you should seek the advice of another neurosurgeon. I reiterate that advice. I do not intend entering into any further correspondence on the matter,” he wrote.
Ms McCafferty argues, however, that once he accepted her on to his list for a consultation, he had accepted her as a patient.
When she complained to the hospital patient services department, it said it would endeavour to get another neurosurgeon to operate on her. Last week the department wrote to her, saying Dr Pidgeon had advised that consultants “have a right to decline any referral of a patient for treatment, other than cases that are of an immediate extreme urgency”.
The letter added: “Mr Pidgeon is adamant that he is within his rights to refuse to accept your referral, and as you were never a patient of his, there is no basis for a complaint against him. I therefore have no complaint to investigate in relation to this issue.”
Ms McCafferty does not accept this and is now writing another letter to the hospital seeking a more thorough investigation.
Meanwhile, Steven Young, another neurosurgeon at Beaumont, who heard of her situation, called her and offered to treat her. She is due to have surgery on September 21st.
In a statement, the hospital said it regretted that the letter to Ms McCafferty notifying her that her appointment had been cancelled did not arrive on time. “The hospital apologised to her for that at the time and immediately sought to make alternative arrangements to ensure she could be seen as soon as possible by another consultant,” it said.
“Staff at Beaumont Hospital are greatly experienced in dealing with patients and relatives, many of whom are anxious about their condition. It is rare that a patient will be declined to be seen on the basis of their behaviour,” it added.
The hospital spokesman also said Dr Pidgeon’s public secretary did not wish to comment.
There was no response to messages left for Dr Pidgeon with Beaumont’s spokesman, his private secretary and sent to him via e-mail, to see whether he wished to comment.