In-tray held key chart for three months, inquiry told

THE CHART of a woman who later died from cancer waited in the in-tray of a Drogheda-based consultant gynaecologist for three months, a fitness to practise inquiry at the Medical Council heard yesterday.

Nora Landers, secretary to the patient’s GP, said she was “horrified” when the consultant’s secretary at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital told her the file waited for his attention for three months.

The inquiry also heard a consultant radiologist at the hospital could not understand why the biopsy recommended in January 2008 did not take place until July.

Sharon McEneaney from Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, had a cancerous tumour in her abdomen and died, aged 31, in April 2009 after delays in her treatment at the hospital.

She first attended Our Lady of Lourdes in October 2007, but she was not treated for cancer until July 2008 and only had a biopsy after former TD Dr Rory O’Hanlon intervened in late June 2008.

Consultant gynaecologist Dr Etop Sampson Akpan has been accused of professional misconduct in her case.

Recalling her conversation with Dr Akpan’s secretary Karen Murray, Ms Landers said: “She [Ms Murray] said, ‘I don’t know what to do about this lady. The chart is on his desk or tray with a note on it asking what will I do with this girl to follow up’.” Ms Landers said Ms Murray had put the note there herself.

She said she had contacted Ms Murray on an “ongoing basis” for months after Ms McEneaney’s February outpatient appointment with the consultant, asking what was to happen next.

Ms Murray told the inquiry the chart would have been waiting in the consultant’s “tray” for two weeks or four weeks at most. She “definitely” did not think the chart had been left for three months.

Ms Murray did not recall Ms Landers phoning more than once and said she would have written it on the chart.

Senior counsel Eileen Barrington for Dr Akpan said he had not been made aware of the calls.

Also giving evidence was consultant radiologist Dr John Heaney who was involved in performing tests on Ms McEneaney in late 2007 and the biopsy in July 2008.

He was asked by JP McDowell for the Medical Council, if anything struck him as unusual about Ms McEneaney “going out of the system” from February until July.

“I don’t understand what happened,” he said. He was not involved in the primary care but was there on a diagnostic basis and did not know what happened in clinical practices, he said.

Dr Heaney said he did not understand why Dr Akpan would say he was not able to contact him on the day of Ms McEneaney’s February outpatient appointment. “I have a mobile phone,” he said.