Doctors called after patient had turned blue, inquest told

By Georgina O'Halloran


Tuesday March 02 2010

A man who died in a hospital waiting room had been there for seven hours and had turned blue when another patient noticed and alerted doctors, an inquest has heard.

Patrick Dunne (41), of Coultry Road in Ballymun, north Dublin, died of methadone, alcohol and sedative drug toxicity in Dublin's Mater Hospital on January 11, 2009.

Paul Meehan, a patient in the A&E, noticed Mr Dunne's hands and face were blue shortly after 10pm and alerted a receptionist, who went to check for a doctor and nurse and came back to tell him they were all busy.

Dublin City Coroner's Court heard Mr Meehan then drew the matter to a security guard's attention before he wheeled Mr Dunne, who was in wheelchair, to another area and alerted the doctors and nurses, who attended to him.

Mr Dunne was pronounced dead at 10.25pm.

He presented at hospital on January 10 with swollen legs and was triaged at 11pm in the A&E department. Mr Dunne had a history of drink and drug addiction.

He also had a history of leaving before being seen by doctors and was at the hospital very regularly, the coroner's court was told.

He was called at 8.30am on January 11 and again an hour later. But he was not in the waiting room.


Unsteady

CCTV footage shows him leaving the hospital shortly before he was called, and he was deregistered on the hospital's computer system.

Security personnel were alerted of Mr Dunne's presence in the main reception area of the hospital at 2.30pm and, being unsteady on his feet, he was brought in a wheelchair to the A&E department.

When asked by a receptionist if she should re-register Mr Dunne, a nurse told her to wait and see if Mr Dunne stayed.

When the alarm was raised, seven hours later Mr Dunne had not been re-registered.

A member of the security staff said he checked on Mr Dunne at 9.20pm after Mr Meehan asked him to check on the patient and found him sleeping and snoring.

About 20 minutes later a female patient asked the security guard to check on Mr Dunne.

Solicitor for the hospital John Gleeson said the hospital had looked into it and the policy as regards re-registration has been "tightened up."

The coroner recorded a verdict of death by misadventure and endorsed the reviewed re-registration procedure.

- Georgina O'Halloran

Irish Independent

Now thats what you call attentive health service

Allstar wrote: Now thats what you call attentive health service

WELCOME TO IRELAND!!!

The health service over here is a complete and utter joke. Things like this happen all the time. Why? Because the government have cut staff levels so low doctors & nurses are exhausted. They are permanently on the go but don't have enough doctors to cover the amount of people in our hospitals. The night I went in to the hospital when I was miscarrying there was 1 doctor on call to cover the whole maternity hospital. They have built a fantastic new maternity hospital & merged 2 other maternity hospitals into 1. There was me and about 20 other pregnant women in the emergency department all waiting 2 c the 1 doctor

The doctors were probably busy looking on the internet, "what it means when someone goes blue."

AnnaEsse wrote:The doctors were probably busy looking on the internet, "what it means when someone goes blue."

If that weren't true it would be funny.
Yet again, we see the signs of over-worked and understaffed hospitals. It's a shame because the NHS is a great idea but just doesn;t work in practice when you have all these greedy doctors.

I don't think Dublin is part of the NHS, is it??

Maelstrom wrote:I don't think Dublin is part of the NHS, is it??

No its the HSE same thing though. Its still overstretched