A DOCTOR working for the SouthDoc GP co-op who, it is alleged, failed to detect a patient was having a heart attack, appeared before a medical council fitness to practise inquiry yesterday.
Dr Eugene Erasmus, a South African agency doctor in his early seventies, faces six allegations of poor professional performance, including one that he failed to carry out an adequate examination of James Taylor on the May bank holiday weekend of 2009.
Mr Taylor from Nottingham, England, was on holidays in Glandore, Co Cork, when he called SouthDoc in the early hours of the morning and complained of chest pain. He indicated he had previously had a heart attack, that his symptoms were “a little bit” like when he had a heart attack some years earlier, and he was asked to attend SouthDoc’s treatment centre in Skibbereen.
He claimed Dr Erasmus, who came to Ireland in April 2009 to work for the Locumotion agency, diagnosed the residue of a chest infection which he had had for some days and said his high blood pressure needed to be treated and gave him a prescription for this. In the UK the following day when he went to his own GP he was sent by ambulance to hospital and was admitted to a critical care unit. Enzyme levels indicated there had been a cardiac incident.
Dr Erasmus has yet to give evidence but in letters to the medical council read into the record yesterday he indicated that he advised Mr Taylor to attend hospital in Cork for an ECG, as there was no ECG available to him at the Skibbereen treatment centre.
Mr Taylor disputed this. He said he would have gone to Cork for an ECG had he been told to do so. His wife, Sue, agreed.
Dr Erasmus also indicated in correspondence that he was not shown all equipment in the Skibbereen treatment centre on the night as the medical person who would have otherwise done so had to take his son to the airport.
Dr Gary Stack, medical director of SouthDoc which uses Locumotion to get doctors for “red eye” shifts, told the inquiry there were ECG machines in all treatment centres operated by the co-op. He also said there was no doctor on duty that night who had a son old enough to be taken to the airport.
The inquiry heard that initially Dr Erasmus, who has 40 years experience and an unblemished record, claimed he had not seen Mr Taylor but when presented with the receipt he had given Mr Taylor on May 4th, he accepted he had seen him.
Nicholas Butler SC, for the doctor, put it to Mr Taylor that Dr Erasmus told him he did not have “the classic symptoms” of a heart attack. Mr Taylor said he didn’t remember exactly but couldn’t disagree. Mr Butler asked why notes taken in the UK indicated he had to drive five hours to the nearest medical facility in Ireland. Mr Taylor said he didn’t understand why that was in the notes.
Mr Butler suggested to him if there were inaccuracies in what he said to people in Nottingham then there may also be inconsistencies in his evidence to the committee. Mr Taylor responded that the central points were consistent.
The case continues today.