A SENIOR consultant at University Hospital Limerick, one of four people placed on administrative leave pending a disciplinary inquiry into the death of Aoife Johnston at the Dooradoyle hospital, has brought a High Court action to be allowed go back to work.
The Sunday Independent reported that Prof Brian Lenehan, Chief Clinical Director at UHL, applied for an injunction at the High Court last Thursday seeking a restraining order preventing the HSE from suspending him.
The UHL Chief Clinical Director is due to go back to court with the application later this month.
The news comes at the same time as emerging reports that the moving of patients on trolleys out of the UHL Emergency Department (ED) and onto overflow wards is one of the central disagreements which features in an unredacted version of former Chief Justice Frank Clarke’s report into what happened on the night of the 16-year-old’s Shannon girl’s death from sepsis.
The report outlines how a call was made to a hospital executive by a senior member of nursing staff outlining the overcrowding situation in the ED that night.
It was decided that staff could move a substantial number of admitted patients to overflow wards to free up space in the busy department, according to an account given to Mr Clarke.
But this decision was not enacted and the report describes a direct conflict of accounts of who was or was not told to action the trolley move.
Just after 6am on December 19, the report states, a senior member of medical staff sent an email to senior hospital managers warning of the danger signs in the ED.
It read: “Department tonight equates to major emergency. Patient safety at the highest risk due to staffing deficits and overcrowding and level of acuity… The level of risk to patients and staff in this department is at a new level never before experienced.”
There is also conflict about whether the senior executive contacted by phone – who was off-site at the time – should have checked back to see if patients had been moved.
In the area where Aoife Johnston was placed in the ED, the Clarke report found, there were no forms kept or filled out relating to sepsis.
In a statement to the Sunday Independent newspaper following news breaking of his High Court action, Prof Lenehan said the tragic death of Aoife is “never far from my thoughts and, as I have always pressed for, must remain central in whatever comes out of this process”.
“I have participated and will continue to participate fully in all internal HSE processes. My goal is that those processes are concluded comprehensively and expeditiously and I have not sought to delay the investigation process in my action to protect my rights.
“The decision, however, to place me on administrative leave, in my capacity as chief clinical director, a role to which I was appointed in 2020 and reappointed to in 2023, was, I believe, unwarranted.”
