WOMAN’S CLAIM

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21113, 12 August 1938, Page 7

WOMAN’S CLAIM

NEGLIGENCE ALLEGED SUIT AGAINST HOSPITAL BOARD By Telegraph —Pres? Association AUCKLAND, August 11 The case for defence in the retrial of the claim by Mrs Margaret Barry was continued to-day. Re-examined by Mr Meredith, Dr. J. Dreadon said that when he had finished the internal part of his operation on the plaintiff in the Auckland hospital he had turned to the sister and asked her if the swab count was correct. The sister assured him that it was and he closed the wound. Sister M. E. Gould, night theatre sister at the Auckland hospital in January, 1937, explained the system of the double counting and checking of swabs. She was instrument nurse at the operation on Mrs Barry on January 21, 1937. The records produced showed that she had checked the swabs and had her count verified before and after the operation. Dr. L. A. Spedding said he had satisfied himself that all the swabs were accounted for after the operation. It was true, witness said, that he had read Mother Agnes’s evidence given at the first hearing and had said that having read it he had come to the conclusion that what Dr. Bridgman had removed was a diseased ovary. Personally he had come to the conclusion that Dr. Bridgman did not find a swab.

Dr. F. J. GWynne, specialist in radiolagy, said he had taken the X-ray plates produced for Dr. Bridgman, who had asked him to show the extent and location of the sinus in Mrs Barry. Dr. Bridgman said afterwards that the plates would give him the information he sought. It was not correct that Dr. Bridgman suggested that a plate showed a swab. The method used would not determine the presence of a swab.

At Mr Sullivan’s request, witness made careful measurements of a shadow on one of the X-ray plates and said it represented an object about li inches long by nearly s inch wide. Dr. W. W. Main, radiologist at the Auckland hospital, produced an X-ray photograph he had had taken of Mrs Barry. He had been asked to examine for an opaque foreign body, and his report was “no evidence of an opaque foreign body.” Referring to marking said by Dr. Bridgban to represent a swab, witness said he would not expect a foreign body to produce an outline of that shape. He had heard of a pair of forceps having been recovered from an Auckland hospital patient, but he knew nothing of the case. Dr. K. MacCormick, senior surgeon at the Auckland hospital, described the treatment given to Mrs Barry there last August. “It is no part of my business here,” said witness, “to say whether a swab was or was not found, but the course of Mrs Barry’s illness and recovery is quite explicable by an ordinary train of disease apart from any swab.” Dead tissue might become practically a “foreign body.” The hearing was adjourned.