Obstetrician left patient at critical time, court told

A consultant anaesthetist has told the High Court he was "disappointed" that a consultant obstetrician had left the operating theatre at Sligo General Hospital after conducting surgery on a critically ill patient, at a time, he believed, when she remained unstable.

Dr Joseph Fitzgerald said he was also surprised that Dr Victor Moore had not closed up the 40-year-old patient's abdomen.

This was done by an obstetrical registrar which would have been appropriate had the patient been stable but, in this case, where the patient was not stable, the most senior doctor should have performed that task and that was Dr Moore, he said.

Dr Fitzgerald agreed he had worked with Dr Moore before and had had no problems with him. He said he had, for the first time, written an aide memoire about Dr Moore's handling of this particular patient because he felt there were issues about Dr Moore's management of her case, including inappropriate delegation of responsibility.

He was giving evidence about one of four patients whose treatment by Dr Moore, Kilwarlin Avenue, Hillsborough, Co Down, led to the Medical Council making findings of professional misconduct against him in 2005.

He is now challenging those findings in proceedings before Mr Justice Michael Hanna.

The court heard evidence yesterday on Dr Moore's treatment of the woman whose healthy baby he delivered on October 9th, 2003e. However the placenta was partially retained and this led to the woman undergoing three separate procedures. The court heard the placenta was manually removed by Dr Moore. Later, it was observed the woman was bleeding heavily and a second procedure, a laparotomy, was carried out by Dr Moore to address that.

It was alleged that Dr Moore left the theatre while the patient was still unstable and left an obstetrical registrar to do closing-up procedures.

It was also alleged that Dr Moore later returned with another obstetrician who, in what is alleged to have been an abdication of responsibility by Dr Moore, carried out a third procedure which involved repairing a large tear in the woman's vagina.

It was further alleged there were difficulties contacting Dr Moore to deal with his patient that day and he had left the operating theatre at critical times. The Medical Council upheld those complaints which led to its find- ing of professional misconduct.

Also yesterday, Dr Mehret Behre, an obstetrical registrar at the hospital, said she disagreed with certain matters in Dr Moore's notes of his treatment of and conduct relating to the same patient.

Those matters included what Dr Moore had said to her when she had stated that the patient was bleeding from her vagina and suggested it be inspected.

Dr Mehret said Dr Moore had said: "Suit yourself" and that he had contacted another obstetrician. She denied he had said: "If you find something, suture it" and that he was going to get another consultant. Pressed on the matter, Dr Mehret said there could be a "linguistic misunderstanding".