GP said I was abusing system, claims mother
A MOTHER who thought her daughter had swine flu claims that an on-call GP told her she was ‘overprotective’ and ‘abusing the system’.
Naas doctor Aoife Kavanagh was accused of being ‘rude’ and ‘ignorant’ to the woman, a Medical Council Fitness to Practise committee heard yesterday.
Dr Kavanagh is facing a series of allegations of professional misconduct or poor professional performance relating to her time working with the out-of-hours service KDoc.
The mother said she had been up all night comforting her three-year-old daughter, who had a high temperature. At 6am on December 8, 2009, she rang the service to make an appointment because she knew ‘something was wrong’.
She told the hearing she was met by a bleary-eyed doctor who proceeded to rebuke her for bringing the child to the surgery.
‘She said there was nothing wrong with the child,’ the mother said. ‘She told me I was abusing the system and that I was being an over-protective mother. I felt dismissed.’
Earlier, secretary Renee Culbert complained about Dr Kavanagh’s delay in seeing a patient on October 17, 2005. A call logged at 11pm was still not answered by the time she left the practice at 12.05am, she said.
Clinic nurse Catherine McMahon also claimed that the GP had behaved in an aggressive and unprofessional manner to her on October 1, 2005.
She said Dr Kavanagh criticised her decision to make an appointment for two patients in Newbridge instead of referring them to Celbridge. But lawyers for the GP said that Dr Kavanagh will claim that the trip had caused both patients to arrive at the surgery ‘covered in vomit’.
The complaints cover 2005 to 2010, but the inquiry heard that the GP felt so aggrieved about what was going on in KDoc, that in late 2006 she recommended that everything be referred to the Medical Council.
A KDoc committee decided that no action should be taken against her. The fitness to practise inquiry has been adjourned until March 18.