Enniscorthy man whose cancer was missed ‘told to go drink a Guinness’

AN ELDERLY and gravely ill Enniscorthy man, one of the 13 whose cancer was missed, was told to ‘go home and drink a Guinness’ after spending 15 hours in the emergency department of Wexford General Hospital.

Dee Fitzpatrick said she brought her father Pat to the hospital in February, 2015, with signs of the disease, but he was discharged after tests and hours of observation, only to be called back a month later for a colonoscopy at another hospital, which revealed he had cancer.

She said she was incredulous that as he was being discharged, a doctor at the emergency department said her father should have a Guinness, ‘which goes against all government policy’.

The cancer had gone unnoticed for two years because of the ‘grave errors’ by the consultant who carried out the bowel scans.

Ms Fitzpatrick described the report as ‘very thorough and very clinical’, and said it ‘ highlights the very grave errors made by the consultant and the absolute lack of oversight of his work’.

She said it did provide a sense of relief, but it had been a very long wait for her father and the family.

‘ They did unreservedly apologise and there is comfort in that,’ she said. All the affected families were briefed on the report before its release.

‘You cannot lose sight of the importance of the BowelScreen programme, but it has to be a robust system. There have been 13 mistakes made and those mistakes are men and women and their families,’ said Ms Fitzpatrick, who lives in Dublin.

Asked by this newspaper about her 72-year-old father’s condition, she replied that he was gravely ill, but was ‘fighting a good fight’.

She said he would have been ‘in a very different place’ had the cancer been detected in 2013, which would have meant that immediate treatment was put in place.

‘We have to live with that. We will never know,’ she said, adding that dwelling on what-ifs ‘really has an effect on your mental health’.

Ms Fitzpatrick said the family did not know the identity of the consultant, referred to as ‘Clinician Y’ in the report.

‘We’ve had no contact and don’t know who he is. I think at this point we don’t want to interfere with the due process,’ she said.

Asked about the possibility of legal action, she replied: ‘It would be up to the DPP following the Irish Medical Council’s recommendations. We won’t undo anything, but somebody needs to be held to account.’

In February 2013, Mr Fitzpatrick was one of the first patients in Wexford to take up the offer of a colonoscopy under the BowelScreen programme. The test performed by ‘Clinician Y’ gave him the all-clear.

Two years later, however, he went to Wexford’s emergency department complaining of symptoms indicative of possible cancer. A month later, in March 2015, he received a call from the hospital asking him to have a repeat colonoscopy, which was carried out at St Vincent’s in Dublin. This showed he had bowel cancer.