Yet another blow to Irish women’s faith in system
Report reveals litany of grave failings at Galway maternity hospital
POOR COMMUNICATION, staffing shortages and insufficient training were among the serious failings discovered at a Galway hospital following an investigation into the circumstances in which 18 babies died or were born with a disability.
A damning report into maternity services at Portiuncula University Hospital in Ballinasloe showed that serious errors in management occurred in ten cases.
Of the 18 infants included in the review, six died, with four of these receiving care which had significant failings.
The hospital was slammed for its insensitive communication with the families of the infants who had died. Some families said that they received phone calls from staff asking about the child’s wellbeing after it had died, while one family received a similar call on the day of their baby’s funeral.
Concerns outlined in the report included the poor interpretation of CTG scans, which trace the baby’s heartbeat, and a delay in decision-making when a distressed CTG scan was detected.
Problems were also discovered around the administration of oxytocin, which is used to put pregnant women into labour.
Other issues raised included the understaffing of both midwives and consultants and the ‘blurring’ of responsibilities between senior medical staff and midwives.
The review was commissioned in January 2015 to look into the delivery and neonatal care in the cases, which involved 16 families, from 2008 and 2014.
The report also underlined that a lack of open disclosure was a major issue in the hospital.
Saolta University Health Care Group have said that since the review began, changes have been made at PUH to address the issues raised. James Keane, General Manager of PUH yesterday apologised to the families involved.
‘We remain committed to providing the highest quality maternity services to our community and the team here in PUH has worked over the last three years to put in place additional measures to ensure we provide the highest standard of care to the women using our services,’ he said.
‘We are continually monitoring and auditing the service to highlight areas that require improvement or enhancement.
‘We have addressed many of the issues raised in this review report and we are progressing with the implementation of all of the recommendations through the implementation group established last year,’ he said.
Commenting on the report, Dr Pat Nash, Group Chief Clinical Director of Saolta, said: ‘We recog nise the profound impact that these events have had on the families involved and we thank them for their willingness to engage with the review process.
‘I would hope that this report and the individual case reports will help give the families the answers they have been looking for about aspects of their care.’
Dr Nash concluded: ‘My key priority at the start of this process was to ensure that we could learn from the issues that would be identified by the review process, put in place measures to ensure that the highest standard of maternity care is provided at Portiuncula University Hospital, and minimise the risk of this happening again.’
AIMS Ireland, which advocates for improvements in maternity healthcare, last night described the long-awaited report as ‘yet another damning blow’ to the confidence of Irish women in their health and maternity services, and also criticised the use of CTG machines.
‘Our maternity services are completely over-reliant on CTG or continuous electronic monitoring,’ said Krysia Lynch, chair of the group.
‘This is not evidence-based care as it is, and now we see, from this and many other maternity care scandals, that these CTG machines are causing more problems than they are solving and being operated and read by staff we suspect are not adequately trained to do so.’
18 babies died or had a disability