A Medical Council inquiry has resumed into allegations of poor professional performance against an obstetrician and gynaecologist and the care of three patients.
Dr Andrea Hermann worked as a registrar at Sligo University Hospital from July 2013 to May 2014.
Sligo consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Heather Langan told the inquiry today that at an interview at the hospital in June 2013, Dr Hermann said she had no conditions attached to her continued practice.
Dr Langan told the inquiry she recalled there had been some media reports about Dr Hermann and her history with the Medical Council but she did not know much detail at the time.
There were a number of hospital staff present at the interview, which lasted about half an hour.
Along with the clinical care allegations at this inquiry, it is also alleged that Dr Hermann failed to tell hospital management that the council had attached conditions to her continued practice, in that she had to undergo retraining and supervision.
Dr Langan said that if Dr Hermann had required retraining, it would have been more suitable to be done in a bigger hospital unit than Sligo.
Dr Langan said the hospital had a computerised risk management reporting system and from mid December 2013 to early January 2014 there were a cluster of incidents involving Dr Hermann.
Some of these were reported anonymously by staff, a system Sligo has to encourage reporting.
Dr Langan said some of the incidents were minor but others were not so minor and it was decided to take Dr Hermann off call.
Later Dr Langan said she learned from the Medical Council that Dr Hermann had conditions attached to her continued working and also had wrongly suggested to the council that Dr Langan was her supervising consultant at Sligo.
Dr Hermann resigned from the hospital in May 2014.
Dr Langan also told the inquiry that what Dr Hermann had done in the case of one patient - Patient F - made no surgical sense.
The patient had a baby delivered by caesarean section by Dr Hermann on 22 January 2014.
The baby sustained a deep laceration to its head with the scalpel and was bleeding profusely.
She said patient F's husband collapsed on the floor of theatre.
Dr Langan said she intervened in the operation and asked Dr Hermann to stop.
She had not conducted the surgery properly, had left a massive incision in patient F and had failed to stitch the blood vessels, after the C-section, to avoid crisis bleeding.
An expert witness, Dr Philip Owen, who is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist in Glasgow, told the inquiry that the surgery performed on another patient - Patient A - left a scar that he had never seen before after a caesarean section.
Dr Owen said it was not to an acceptable standard and showed a lack of due care and attention to detail by Dr Hermann and was poor professional performance.
The inquiry has now concluded and the committee will deliberate on the allegations tomorrow.
It is expressed to give its decision next week.
