Tag Archives: Dr Peter Boylan

17/4/2013 Inquests into the death of Savita Halappanavar

Writing in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post, Dr Peter Boylan (consultant obstetrician and former Master of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street) has called for cross-party support to either repeal or retain the Eighth Amendment:

The vast majority of Irish women who seek abortions do so in the UK. This avenue should not be presumed to be available forever. Growing public awareness in Britain of the extent to which we are exporting our problem, as well as on-going financial constraints in the NHS, make it likely that British hospitals will increasingly restrict access to women from Ireland for termination.

Our current law is governed by the 1983 Eighth Amendment, which provides for the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn. As we saw with the case of Savita, this has resulted in abortion being lawful only where there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother.

Obstetricians find this difficult to interpret. Put simply, obstetricians have to decide how close to death a woman has to be before they can intervene and the woman herself has no say in the matter.

Psychiatrists have to assess the risk of suicide. In practice this really only applies to those who are not able to travel, the majority of whom are in the care of the state.

…I suggest that our politicians reach cross-party agreement, as soon as possible, that a referendum – whose sole issue should be the removal or retention of the Eighth Amendment – will be held at a specified date early in the term of the next government. Such political consensus would not bind parties to a particular stance on the referendum to follow, but would take much of the toxicity out of the issue of a referendum itself from the politics of the next general election campaign and lessen the kind of aggressive lobbying to which TDs have been subject in the past.

We can only hope thereafter for a mature, factual, and compassionate debate on this most difficult of subjects. In the meantime, bad law makes hard cases.

No country for vulnerable women (Dr Peter Boylan, Sunday Business Post) [behind paywall]

Previously: Dr Peter Boylan on Broadsheet

Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland

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Dr Peter Boylan, above, the Clinical Director of the National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street, Dublin, appeared on RTE R1’s Morning Ireland earlier to discuss the first reported termination of a pregnancy apparently carried out under the provisions of the new abortion legislation.

Cathal Mac Coille: “What can you say about this?”

Dr. Peter Boylan: “Well, first of all, I’m not sure how the journalist knows that this is the first termination and whether, or not he’s got his facts right.”

Mac Coille: “Is it the first?”

Dr. Boylan: …”I have no idea! We don’t have access to all obstetric units in the country and I doubt if he does too.”

Mac Coille: “Is it the first in the National Maternity Hospital?”

Dr. Boylan: “No, I mean we would be caring for patients and making the appropriate clinical decisions, such as this, regularly.”

Mac Coille: “So just to be clear, are you saying that this is not the first such procedure cariried out under the terms of the new legislation?”

Dr Boylan: “No, well, I can’t answer that! There are reporting mechanisms put in place by the Minister, so that at the end of each year there would be figures available for the public.”

Mac Coille: “Again, just to be clear, when you say, you can’t answer it, you are the Clinical Director of the Hospital, and therefore”…

Dr. Boylan: “It’s not that I can’t, it’s that I’m not going to….(answer)”

Mac Coille: “You’re not denying it, so, you’re just saying that you can’t confirm or deny it?”

Dr. Boylan: “No, I can, but I’m not going to!”

Mac Coille: “Ok.”

Dr. Boylan: “Patient confidentiality is at the key of this whole thing, at the root of this whole thing. It’s absolutely unacceptable for a patients details to be splashed around the front page of a newspaper. One of the first things I’ll be doing today and we’ll be doing it next week is investigating and seeing who is the source of this information who has been giving this out to the public. it’s not fair on patients to do this. And it’s completely unethical if the doctor who was giving this information to the public…”

Mac Coille: “Is it not correct that the Minister for Health is required to publish a yearly report on terminations where they were carried out and the number of terminations. So that this is information that would in the normal course of events become available anyway?”

Dr. Boylan: “It will become available, in a global sense throughout the country, individual institutions will not be named, for obvious reasons. Patient confidentiality will be maintained. But to give our individual detais of a patient to a member of the press is absolutely unethical behaviour, by any medical personnel. And if it’s a doctor, then this sort of transgression,if you like, or bad behaviour could well end up before the Medical Council. Patient confidentiality is absolutely critical in our dealing with women in sensitive and difficult situations.”

Mac Coille: “And is that…, you mentioned the Medical Council’s regulations, what about, is there a particular code enforced at the National Maternity Hospital?”
Dr. Boylan: “There’s a code of confidentiality right across the medical profession. When a patient goes to see a doctor, that’s an episode that appears between the doctor and the patient. When a patient is in a hospital, anything that happens to that patient within that hospital remains confidential. And it’s absolutely critical that it stays the way it is, and its standards of confidentiality are maintained by serious professionals. This is not the sort of behaviour you can expect from a serious professional, it’s completely unprofessional to give details of a patient which allows her to be identified. And can you imagine her distress to find her details are spread across the front of a newspaper and being discussed in the news? It’s outrageous.”

Mac Coille: “Are you talking about a formal investigation, or what kind of inquiry are you intending to launch, and how quickly?”

Dr. Boylan: “Well, that depends on how easy it is! I mean, if someone ‘fesses up and says, ‘yes, it was me and I’m very sorry’, then that’s very straightforward.”

Mac Coille: ” If they do….” (interrupts)

Dr. Boylan: “The most serious thing about this Cathal, is the serious breach in patient confidentiality, that’s the most serious thing about this whole episode….. Patients will get the care they deserve, and we will not let any woman die in Holles Street, we will give her the appropriate care, but we will not have her details splashed around the newspapers.”

Mac Coille: “And if a medical professional were to say, they did it, if that were to arise and to apologise, would that be the end of the matter?”

Dr. Boylan: “It depends, it’s too early to say”

Mac Coille: “Dr. Peter Boylan, thank you very much!”

Listen here

Earlier: First Abortion Mystery

The Floodgates

(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)

10/01/2013 Abortion hearings. Pictured Dr Sean O'D

Peter Boylan is being totally disingenuous when he says that a lot of people against the recent abortion Act did not know that the principle of dual effect is respected. Pro-life people are very well educated about these extremely important issues of life and death.

I wish the same could be said for the pro-Aborts. Fr. Doran was simply stating that the direct intentional killing of a child will not be carried out in the Mater. The Government can provide its own killing fields and its own abortionists.

It appears there are several willing candidates. The EGM of the College of Psychiatry of Ireland in September will have a lot of interesting things to say about the abuse of medical personnel to facilitate unnecessary abortions.

Dr. Boylan is of a Pro-Choice persuasion. He is not an unbiased observer and he was allover the media peddling abortion legislation until suddenly he stopped…and re-emerged as the “independent” expert in the Savita Halappanavar inquiry. Now that is over, he can get back into the game. And, surprise surprise, he is doing so!

Dr Seán Ó Domhnaill, above, of the LIFE Institute.

A response to Dr Peter Boylan (consultant obstetrician and former master of the National Maternity Hospital) on the comments by Father Kevin Doran that abortions could not be performed at the Mater Hospital in Dublin,

CONTEXT: “Would He Prefer For Both Of Them To Die?”

Previously: Dr Seanie, Abortion And The Big C

(Wanderley Massafelli / Photocall Ireland)

9030968317/4/2013 Inquests into the death of Savita Halappanavar

 

Dr Peter Boylan, (above) consultant obstetrician and former master of the National Maternity Hospital gave his reaction this morning to Father Kevin Doran’s comments that abortions could not be performed at the Mater, Dublin, top, because of the hospital’s “ethos”.

Here is some of what Dr Boylan had to say to Newstalk’s Breakfast presenter Shane Coleman:

“Well I suspect that Father Doran is speaking in a rather personal capacity and not representing the views of the hospital and I certainly hope that is the case. The whole purpose of a hospital is to save people’s lives and Father Doran is proposing that a woman in an intensive care unit in the Mater Hospital is denied a life saving operation because it goes against his personal ethos or what he would say is the ethos of the hospital, then that is an extremely disturbing thing to say”.

“You can imagine a scenario, say the Mater, for example is associated with the Rotunda Hospital. So supposing a woman who gets seriously ill is transferred to the intensive care unit in the Mater Hospital and needs a termination in order to save her life, and is Father Doran going to stand by her bedside in the intensive care unit and prevent the doctors from giving the care she needs to save her life? I mean it’s really..it’s just not on.”

“Well I can understand Father Doran’s personal view and one has to respect his personal view but he’s not a doctor and there’s too long of a history of the Catholic Church interfering in the care of women, particularly in the area of reproductive health in this state and they really need to back off and leave it to the doctors. It’s absolutely intolerable that a hospital would deny somebody life-saving treatment in the 21st century in a Western country. It just beggars belief to be honest with you.

Would he prefer for both of them to die? For the baby and the mother to die? A lot of people against this Act miss the point that if the mother dies, the baby dies also. So are they happy to stand by and watch a woman die and be denied life-saving treatment because it goes against their personal beliefs which are not shared by the doctors looking after the woman or by the woman herself or by her family? It really, you know we really need to move on from this sort of interference.”

Listen here

Earlier: Nothing Really Maters

Previously: Right To Reply

Dr Peter Boylan and Breda O’Brien: The Transcript

When Dr Boylan Met Dr Kiely

(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)

00138755Too late.

Dr Peter Boylan responds to the eleven members of Opus Dei consultants that attacked his credibility yesterday.

The signatories then go on to assert their certainty that termination of pregnancy can be performed “where ruptured membranes are accompanied by any clinical or bio-chemical marker of infection”. This is a truly astonishing statement. It implies that an elevated white blood cell count, which is a non-specific marker of inflammation, on its own would justify a termination of pregnancy. Such an opinion would not surprisingly be welcomed by those advocating a complete liberalisation of the abortion law in Ireland because, if adopted, would truly “open the floodgates”. I suspect that many of our colleagues in active clinical practice would not subscribe to this view.

 

Irish Times letters

Previously: Toxic Culture

Peter Boylan And Breda O’Brien: The Transcript

(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)

pbbk

Dr Peter Boylan’s encounter with Breda O’Brien on Radio One last week wasn’t his first time spreading his blasted ‘facts’.

He was also involved in this merciless exchange on ‘Prime Time’ in November with Dr Berry Kiely, medical advisor to  the Pro-Life Campaign. (Scroll to 12:10)

Dr Berry Kiely: “Sorry. Can I just clarify there, Peter? Because I was looking at the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists website today and they have guidelines for the management of miscarriage em..in pregnancy…”

Dr Peter Boylan: “Not threatened miscarriage though. That’s different you see. There’s an awful lot of confusion about this. Miscarriage, threatened miscarriage, abortion, mixed abortion and so on.”

Kiely: “But they do talk about incomplete miscarriages which we are told is what happened in this case.”

Boylan: “That’s where the baby has died and the tissues have been passed and there’s remaining tissue. That’s what an incomplete abortion is and you should know that, Berry.”

Kiely: “Yeah, no but what they’re what they’re talking about in these guidelines is that they say you have conservative management you have medical induction of labour and you have..”

Boylan: “This is talking about really really early miscarriages, six or seven weeks which is completely different. This is muddying the waters here.”

Kiely: “Imagine, Peter. I think perhaps that’s not being fair here.”

Boylan: “No.”

Kiely: “I don’t think there is anything from any of the other obstetricians I have talked to. None of them seem to make that tremendous distinction you’re making. They’ve all agreed…that yes…”

Boylan: “Well you’re not talking to the right people.”

Kiely: “Oh.”

Previously: Dr Peter Boylan and Breda O’Brien: The Transcript

Boylanbreda_obrien

Former Master of Holles Street Hospital in Dublin, Dr Peter Boylan, top, and Breda O’Brien, above, a patron of Iona Institute and Irish Times columnist, were among the guests on RTÉ’s Marian Finucane this morning.

They spoke about the death and subsequent inquest of Savita Halappanavar.

During their discussion, Dr Boylan accused Ms O’Brien of revising history.

Here’s how it unfolded:

Marian Finucane: “Explain how you got involved in the hearings in Galway, last week.”

Dr Peter Boylan: “The coroner wrote to me and asked me would I review the notes and the statements and issue a report to him, so that’s it basically.”

Finucane: “And that was it. And were you there for the whole thing?”

Boylan: “No, I got the transcripts every night but I wasn’t present. I only went down to give my expert evidence on Thursday.”

Finucane: “Right. And your conclusions?”

Boylan: “My conclusions are that if she’d had a termination on the Monday or the Tuesday, she would now be alive. That by the time…”

Finucane: “This is Savita. Just to…”

Boylan: “Yes. By the time a termination became legally realistic prospect, she was becoming seriously ill. And even if they’d started a termination on the morning of the Wednesday that it was too late at that stage. I did identify a number of deficiencies in the care but none of them individually contributed to her death, in my opinion. And, the question of a surgical termination was brought up in some of the media, during the course of discussions since the finish of the inquest. And I don’t want to be graphic about what a surgical termination means at 17 weeks for the live foetus but there’s a very high likelihood that she would have died as a consequence of having had a surgical termination at that stage because…”

Finucane: “On the Monday or the Tuesday?”

Boylan: “No. On the Wednesday.”

Finucane: “No.”

Boylan: “You couldn’t do a termination on the Monday or the Tuesday in this country. It’s just, it was not legal.”

Finucane: “Yeah, I must have misheard, I thought I heard people, on both sides, saying that if a miscarriage was inevitable that then there would…”

Boylan: “The clinical circumstances in which she was, with ruptured membranes at 17 weeks, the chances of survival for that baby were absolutely very small, less than 10%. There are incidences however, well-recognised in this country and internationally where babies in those circumstances can survive. They get to 34 weeks maybe or even later…”

Finucane: “34? Yeah but she was 17?”

Boylan: “She was 17. Yes but a pregnancy, even with ruptured membranes, can continue. It’s highly unlikely. It’s not inevitable that she would have a miscarriage. Now what would have happened in another country is that on the ward round, when she ruptured her membranes, the dismal outlook for the baby would have been discussed with her. And her input into the management, and her husband’s input into the management, would have been taken into account. We can’t do that here. And what would have happened is she would have said one of two things. One: ‘I’d like this pregnancy to continue as long as possible as I dearly want a baby and we want to do everything possible’. That might be say in the circumstances where the mother is in her late 30s/40s, it’s an IVF pregnancy and so on. Not very much different. Or she might, she could said ‘Look no, the outlook is so dismal, I’d like just to have, get this pregnancy over with, in other words terminate it, and then move on and perhaps get pregnant again soon. Her wishes would have been taken into account in any other country. Now what would have happened then is that they would have said to her ‘Look, have a think about this because these are very big decisions.”

Finucane: “Sure are.”

Boylan: “And they would have come back to her the next day, or later the same day, or they might be absolutely certain what they wanted to do. And then, whatever it is that they wished would be undertaken. In any other country.”

Finucane: “Again, just listening to the, to the evidence, I presume every person operates to the guidelines, you know, according to the law.”

Boylan: “We have to.”

Finucane: “Yeah, yes, yeah. But the notion of percentages.”

Boylan: “Yes.”

Finucane: “Of, will you die, won’t you die…”

Boylan: “Yes.”

Finucane: “Does that happen? A lot?”

Boylan: “No. And we cannot, as doctors, be expected to do our ward rounds with a calculator in one hand and the law in another hand. We have to be given the liberty to do what we feel is best for a patient and in this…These circumstances are the only circumstances in obstetric care where a woman’s wishes are not taken into account. Where she has no input into her care. Now if you think of any other sort of situation like that you end up talking about the Taliban. Where else are women denied an input into their care? In what other clinical situation? I can’t identify any. Women are very much involved in their care in obstetrics, in decisions to induce labour, decisions about Caesarian sections, decisions about all sorts of things. And that’s how it should be. But in this circumstances, they are not allowed. And that’s the law.”

Finucane: “Breda, how did, how did we end up here?”

Breda O’Brien: “I’m really alarmed at a couple of things that Peter has said. First of all that the law would not have allowed intervention on Monday because John Bonner, who would be universally acknowledged to be deeply conservative on this, said he would have gone, he would have been in there like a light.”

Boylan: “That’s incorrect.”

O’Brien: “Em. He’s not present to..what he..this is..”

Boylan: “I was on Prime Time with him there last night I think it was…”

O’Brien: “What he said was…”

Boylan: “Friday night. And that’s not correct what he said. He said he would wait until she was ill and then he would have no hesitation in intervening.”

O’Brien: “Can I clarify, Peter?”

Boylan: “He was very clear about that because I picked him up on that.”

O’Brien: “Can I clarify, Peter? When I said he would have been in like a light I was talking about in terms of the care. The care is the crucial issue here.  I spoke to three obstetricians over the week, two in person and one by email to clarify this point.”

Finucane: “I should clarify that you yourself are a patron of Iona, just for the record.”

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