Clinics draft in more nurses to cope with demand for tests
■ Fallout from Vicky Phelan case sees more women seek screening
CLINICS are set to increase the number of nurses available amid a sharp rise in the number of women seeking tests in the aftermath of the Vicky Phelan case.
The medical director of the Dublin Well Woman Centre, Shirley McQuade, said there were people who were “anxious and worried” and the clinics had noticed a significant increase in activity.
“In fact, we are increasing the number of nurses available over the next few weeks to take more tests,” she said.
“Some patients are people who have been putting their tests on the long finger and this has prompted them to come in and have a test.”
Well Woman is involved in up to 7,000 smear tests a year.
Meanwhile, Ms Phelan, whose missed cervical cancer diagnosis exposed problems in the testing system, said she doesn’t know how the director of CervicalCheck “sleeps at night”.
The mother of two, from Annacotty, Co Limerick, spoke out after it emerged that 206 women who have cervical cancer should have had earlier intervention. Ms Phelan, who waited three years to learn about her misdiagnosis, said she was appalled there was no clarity from Dr Grainne Flannelly, the clinical lead of CervicalCheck, yesterday.
Dr Flannelly said she could not be sure all the women have been told about their reports.
Ms Phelan (43) said her heart goes out to other women who were also victims of misdiagnosis. “The fact the head of the national screening programme could not say that these women had been communicated with to me is absolutely disgraceful,” Ms Phelan said.
“I just don’t know how she can sleep at night... if it was me and I thought people’s lives were at stake, I would have been up all night sending out letters.”
The 206 women whose smear tests were misread should have been referred on for further investigation which could have picked up their cancer and led to earlier treatment.
Ms Phelan spoke movingly of the impact the dramatic revelations of the past week and her powerful speech outside the High Court have had on her
family. Ms Phelan settled her case for €2.5m.
She said her daughter Amelia (12) has been affected by the past week, realising her mother may die.
“She has been badly upset for the last few days. The statement really made her upset because she knows now it is much more serious than what we have told her,” Ms Phelan said in an interview with TV3 News.
She also recalled the first time she learned an internal report on her had been carried out by CervicalCheck. She was waiting for a biopsy with her mother and leafed through her file. She found a letter which was written in a very “clinical” manner.
It detailed how in 2011, when she had a smear test, no abnormality was found.
But “on review” the CervicalCheck team discovered she had cancer.
“It was the first time I saw the letter,” she said.
The HSE confirmed yesterday that half the smear tests are sent to a laboratory in the United States to be analysed.
CervicalCheck uses the services of a laboratory in New Jersey and two laboratories in Dublin. The spokeswoman said the outsourcing is not being done for financial reasons but because there is not enough laboratory capacity in Ireland to handle the number of smears.
A spokeswoman said that the cancer audit process looking at the cases of these women has served to identify potential improvements in a number of areas in CervicalCheck.
Changes have been made to the programme to date, including the introduction of HPV testing to improve the assessment of risk for women who have received treatment or with low-grade abnormalities.