A registered nurse and midwife has aired allegations against a former Launceston General Hospital boss, accusing him of falsifying medical death certificates to avoid coronial investigations.
Amanda Duncan made the claims of serious misconduct, including the falsification of medical certificates, during a parliamentary inquiry into ambulance ramping on Tuesday.
She accused Dr Peter Renshaw, the former director of medical services at the hospital, of pressuring junior doctors to ‘do the wrong thing’.
“Dr Renshaw would, at times, attempt to coerce them into incorrectly documenting the cause of death in the emergency department,” she said.
“Multiple nurses have alleged to me the only time we ever see Peter Renshaw on the wards was when he came to change a patient’s cause of death.”
“LGH doctors have reported to me when they were reviewing deceased patients’ notes retrospectively for learning purposes they had inadvertently discovered the cause of death, which they had appropriately determined and documented on a medical certificate of death at the time of death had been amended by Dr Renshaw without their knowledge.”
Dr Renshaw was previously found to have engaged in misconduct by misleading an inquiry into child sexual abuse in institutional settings.
Duncan is now calling for a thorough investigation into the allegations and the establishment of a commission of inquiry to probe the failures in the health system in Tasmania.
The Department of Health say an investigation into Dr Peter Renshaw is already underway following recent claims made against him several months ago.
“We take this matter very seriously, it is a concern. I will be asking my health department to follow up and investigate and report back to me,” Health Minister Guy Barrett said.
