Roman Hasil and the Whanganui DHB - Health and Disability ...

Health and Disability Commissioner
department took an interest in. The Clinical Audit Co-ordinator reported back to Dr C
on a two-monthly basis.
The consultant physician said his role as Clinical Audit Co-ordinator was to promote
clinical audit amongst senior medical staff at Wanganui Hospital, although he was not
actually employed to do the audit. Previous attempts at introducing such a role at the
hospital had failed, and he was encouraged to do what he could. He conducted
interviews of all heads of department to find out what clinical audit was occurring and
what could be done to make it easier. He said that Dr A, as head of department of
obstetrics and gynaecology, told him that some compulsory reporting was ongoing, but
that he had a huge workload and was unable to take time to do any extra audit.
Finally, evidence was provided that Dr Hasil was professionally and socially isolated. He
had little contact with his colleagues and apparently did not avail himself of opportunities
to become more integrated into the community. He rarely sought the opinions of the
other consultants or referred patients to them for opinions. Dr Hasil explained that given
his workload, he did not have the time to actively seek supervision.
Documented meetings
The Supervision Plan for Dr Hasil 16 set out the meetings he was required to attend. This
included:
• weekly formal Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology team meetings held every
Monday morning;
• peer review held on the third Tuesday of every month;
• Obstetrics Standards Review Committee meeting every month;
• Perinatal Review Committee meeting held quarterly.
The minutes have been provided for the weekly departmental meetings. The obstetric
and gynaecology medical staff and other departmental staff members, such as the head of
midwifery and a paediatric representative, attended these meetings. Dr Hasil attended
regularly. He did not attend about seven meetings during his employment. Some of these
coincided with his leave (14 November, 13 March, 21 August, and 28 August 2005). He
attended a local health centre every third Monday morning. Overall, Dr Hasil attended
about half of the weekly departmental meetings.
From the minutes it appears that patients in the delivery suite, the ward (postnatal and
antenatal women, and gynaecology patients) and the neonatal unit were discussed.
Interesting cases and birth statistics, including the number of normal births, home births,
semi-elective births, emergency Caesarean sections, and cases involving an induction of
labour were also discussed. No other documentation of meetings attended by Dr Hasil
has been sighted.
Peer review meetings were held on every third Tuesday and involved senior medical staff
from all departments. The DHB records indicate that Dr Hasil attended only the meeting
in August 2006.
16 See Appendix 6.
24 February 2008