Irish dad, Martin O’Connor, has opened up about how his wife’s death at a private clinic three years after her routine procedure went wrong under the care of Dr Andrea Hermann.
Martin O’Connor featured on RTE’s Prime Time and spoke about his wife’s treatment and subsequent death.
42-year-old Sandra Martin was treated for recurrent cysts on her ovaries, a treatment she had undergone numerous times previously. Sandra had been in the same care each time, under Dr Andrea Hermann.
In late 2005, Sandra became very ill following this routine procedure and eventually suffered cardiac arrest and multiple organ failure. The mum was left in a semi-vegetative state due to brain damage caused by the cardiac arrest and eventually passed away from pneumonia three years later.
Martin had his wife’s case reviewed by a medical expert who concluded that Sandra would not have died had she been given an antibiotic. As Martin told Prime Time in his own words: “She [Dr Hermann] failed to administer antibiotic, that’s what it boils down to ... left her in a bed for four days while she got sicker.”
Martin said he knew things had taken a turn for the worse after Dr Hermann told him Sandra would be fine – until he saw her: “She [Dr Hermann] said she’s down in the ICU recovering but she said she would be fine. I looked at the woman in the bed and I didn’t know who it was and I asked one of the nurses where’s Sandra and she said that’s her behind you and I knew then right away that things weren’t right.”
Prime Time managed to find Dr Hermann who apologised for the incident, saying she was sorry, that her “life has never been the same” since then and confessing that the care administered to Sandra O’Connor was “not good.”
Dr Hermann was also accused of botching a C-Section in Sligo Hospital last year in which a wound was administered “in the wrong place.” The medical report in the case concluded that the care was “careless and resulted in unnecessary harm, pain and suffering.”
This was following her suspension for a year after receiving a guilty verdict in eight counts of professional misconduct back in 2010. After this, she was allowed to return as a doctor under supervision.
Dr Hermann handed in her resignation to Sligo Regional Hospital on May 28th 2014.
