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A medical consultant at the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital took doses out of the hospital to vaccinate family members at home, a review of vaccinations by the maternity hospital has found.
A lawyer asked to investigate the vaccination of family members of staff with leftover doses in January disclosed details of the vaccinations in a report published by the hospital on Thursday.
The report says the master of the Dublin hospital was aware that the consultant - who had been carrying out vaccinations at the hospital - was bringing doses home to administer to their family.
The board of the Coombe asked Brian Kennedy SC to carry out an independent review of the decision by the hospital’s master Prof Michael O’Connell to 16 family members of staff.
As first reported in The Irish Times in January, the initial doses were given to relatives late on Friday, January 8th after Prof O’Connell said doses were left over following vaccinations at the hospital.
Mr Kennedy’s report says that a doctor, only identified in the report as “Consultant B”, took two vaccine doses home and administered them to two family members after a conversation at the hospital with “Consultant C” - who is Prof O’Connell.
“For their part, Consultant B understood that [Prof O’Connell] gave them permission to take the vaccine home. In an interview with me, Consultant B stated that they would not otherwise have taken the vaccine from the hospital,” Mr Kennedy said in the report.
“For their part, [Prof O’Connell] stated in an interview with me that they agreed that Consultant B could take the vaccine home.”
Asked by Mr Kennedy whether he gave permission to the doctor to take the vaccines home, [Prof O’Connell] “characterized their understanding of the position as being more that if Consultant B… was comfortable to take the vaccine home, they were not standing in their way.
“[Prof O’Connell] stated ‘so if that’s construed as permission, that’s permission’ but further states that they do not recall actually stating that they permitted Consultant B to take the vaccine home.”
In a statement, the board of the hospital accepted that “mistakes were made, not least in the decision to vaccinate family members and, in one case, in the administration of two vaccines offsite. Lessons must and will be learnt to ensure that similar issues cannot recur.”
‘Key actions’
Mary Donovan, chairwoman of the hospital, said the board was “disappointed” that the family members were vaccinated with leftover vaccines.
“This should not have happened. We are also concerned that in the case of one family, two vaccinations occurred offsite. Again this should not have happened.”
She said that the board “takes what occurred extremely seriously and has started a process to address the implications”.
The hospital said that “key actions and measures are being implemented to ensure that such an incident could not occur again and hospital guidelines and protocols will be enhanced.”
Ms Donovan said that the hospital has shared Mr Kennedy’s report with the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, the HSE and the Medical Council.
Mr Donnelly, HSE chief executive Paul Reid and other figures in politics and healthcare criticised the decision to vaccinate the family members at a time when only frontline healthcare workers and vulnerable residents in nursing homes had priority for vaccines.
In late January Mr Donnelly sought a full account of what happened with the vaccine rollout at the Coombe from the chairman of the hospital’s board, saying that: “Trust in the vaccine programme is of critical importance and what happened should not have happened.”
Prof O’Connell apologised and said that he made “every effort to prioritise and identify additional frontline workers” for the vaccines on the evening of January 8th but they could not find more so the decision was made to vaccinate family members to avoid doses going to waste.
Prof Deirdre Murphy, head of the department of obstetrics at Trinity College Dublin and a consultant at the Coombe, later told Mr Kennedy as part of his review that almost 40 medical students were overlooked for vaccines on the night they were given to the family members.
Prof Murphy said that the master told her two days after the family members were vaccinated that the hospital was “not in a position” to vaccinate the students.
The HSE has advised that medical students should be vaccinated alongside other health staff during their placements in hospital. Prof Murphy said that at the time of the vaccinations some of the students were working overnight on the labour ward in the Coombe.