No formal search done of patient
Psychiatric nurse Sean Gilmartin (pictured right) started work on Monday morning at St Columba’s Mental Health Unit on 3rd April 2017.
The young psychiatric nurse of 8 years experience had something in common with the late Karl Collins - they had turned 30 within 13 days of each other and were both into sport.
As he entered the room to introduce himself at 8.30am, nurse Gilmartin found Karl sitting on the floor of his bedroom.
“He said he could not recall how he ended up there. He said he had taken 10-12 sleeping tablets which he had concealed,” the nurse told Sligo Coroner’s court at the Courthouse on Monday.
“He said he had not slept in days and he wanted to sleep and end it all,” he said, adding that the young surf instructor, who had moved from Dublin to Bundoran the year previously, did not want his next of kin informed about the incident.
Nurse Gilmartin said he informed Dr James Sweeney and completed a form.
He next interacted with Karl Collins in his bedroom with nurse Gerry McGlinchey at 11.30am to give him medication as prescribed by Dr Edmund O’Mahony and see if Karl had any other medication in his possession.
The deceased handed over Vitamin D tablets he had but no search was carried out of his room to see if he had any other medication.
“There was no formal search,” he told barrister for the Collins family Mr Keith O’Grady BL, instructed by Ms Cliodhna McGuire, solicitor.
“Would a search not be done to see if he had any other med- ication?” Mr O’Grady asked nurse Gilmartin. “Possibly,” he replied, but accepted that wasn’t done in this case.
Psychiatric nurse Stephen Messani testified that he found the deceased unresponsive in his bedroom at 1.30pm after he called to inform him that his girlfriend Gráinne had arrived to see him.
He noticed the wardrobe in the middle of the floor but it wasn’t until he turned to leave that he noticed the patient and he sounded the alarm.
CPR began on the deceased immediately but it was too late.