![\"University](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/002418e4-614.jpg\"\/)
\nThe Chief Executive of the hospital apologised to the family<\/p>\n
An inquest into the death of a 41-year-old man, who died due to an allergic reaction to an antibiotic that he was given at University Hospital Waterford (UHW), has returned a verdict of medical misadventure.<\/p>\n
The inquest heard that prior to his death, the partner of Nicholas Kennedy had informed medical staff that she suspected he was allergic to the antibiotic.<\/p>\n
The Coroner for Waterford City, John P Goff, was told that by not connecting Mr Kennedy’s symptoms to that of an allergic reaction, he was administered the same antibiotic again, which led to severe brain damage.<\/p>\n
Mr Kennedy was admitted to UHW on Christmas Eve 2023. He died in the intensive care unit six days later.<\/p>\n
His mother Kathleen told today’s inquest at Waterford Courthouse that her son was “a tall, strong man in the prime of his life”.<\/p>\n
\nThe Chief Executive of the hospital apologised to the family<\/p>\n
He worked full-time on his family’s farm, and was a father of three young children.<\/p>\n
Ms Kennedy continued that the family are “completely devastated” by Mr Kennedy’s sudden death.<\/p>\n
She explained that Christmas is especially hard, as it was around that time that Mr Kennedy died.<\/p>\n
Paul McGuinn, the barrister representing the hospital, read out a letter sent by the Chief Executive of UHW, Ben O’Sullivan, on 10 June 2026.<\/p>\n
In the letter, Mr O’Sullivan said he wanted to “sincerely apologise” to Mr Kennedy’s family.<\/p>\n
He said: “We should have administered a non-penicillin-based antibiotic.<\/p>\n
“A number of recommendations have been made,” Mr O’Sullivan added.<\/p>\n
According to the post-mortem examination report, which was read into the record at the inquest, Mr Kennedy died due to “anaphylaxis”, meaning a severe allergic reaction.<\/p>\n
The inquest heard that on 23 December 2023, Mr Kennedy went to his own GP complaining of flu-like symptoms.<\/p>\n
He was prescribed steroids, a cough bottle and an antibiotic called Augmentin.<\/p>\n
That evening, about an hour after taking the Augmentin, Mr Kennedy had a seizure that lasted “about 15 seconds,” according to his partner, Bernadette Buckley.<\/p>\n
Ms Buckley called the emergency services, and Mr Kennedy was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.<\/p>\n
According to Ms Buckley, she told the paramedics, the triage nurse who admitted Mr Kennedy and the doctor on-call, Dr Mohammed Kadir, that she suspected Mr Kennedy was having an allergic reaction to Augmentin.<\/p>\n
Ms Buckley said that whilst Mr Kennedy was sitting up in the bed, awake and alert, a nurse walked into his room.<\/p>\n
Ms Buckley told the inquest that: “She (the nurse) didn’t say anything, she didn’t acknowledge us. She inserted a syringe into his cannula, and when it was 90% empty, Nicky suddenly asked, ‘What’s in that?’<\/p>\n
“Then a few moments later, he said, ‘I have a horrible taste in my mouth’ before having a seizure that was much more violent than the first one,” Ms Buckley said.<\/p>\n
Mr Kennedy never regained consciousness.<\/p>\n
The inquest heard that a possible allergic reaction was documented in the notes of both the paramedics and nurses.<\/p>\n
Dr Kadir told the inquest that he admitted that he had not read either set of notes before seeing Mr Kennedy in the resuscitation room of the emergency department.<\/p>\n
However, both he and his two superiors said that this was a “normal procedure”.<\/p>\n
‘Far too late’<\/p>\n
However, Dr Kadir also acknowledged that he knew that Mr Kennedy had suffered a seizure after taking the Augmentin but did not connect the two events at the time.<\/p>\n
After consulting with the senior doctor on duty, Dr Kadir suspected Mr Kennedy had a respiratory infection and possibly sepsis and prescribed him Augmentin, which was administered intravenously.<\/p>\n
Acting on behalf of Mr Kennedy’s family, solicitor Niall Tansey, pointed out that it was “futile” that medical staff would check a patient’s medical history for a drug allergy if they would then “brush over” a drug allergy that came to light in the previous “number of hours”.<\/p>\n
Dr Desmond Fitzgerald, the consultant of emergency medicine at UHW since 2013, read out the results of an external investigation carried out by the HSE.<\/p>\n
The inquest heard that after some initial delays in the investigation, the review began in September 2025, which the coroner remarked was “far too late”.<\/p>\n
The review found that Mr Kennedy’s symptoms were “consistent with an allergic reaction” and the “attending doctor did not recognise this.”<\/p>\n
It found that “an alternative non-penicillin antibiotic should have been administered”.<\/p>\n
A total of 10 recommendations were made in the report, including that upon any future suspicion of a patient having an allergy, “whether from a nurse, paramedic or indeed the family,” it would be treated as an official allergy until otherwise disproven.<\/p>\n
Mr Goff recommended that this become a HSE-wide policy to avoid such a tragedy from happening again.<\/p>\n
Dr Fitzgerald also pointed out that UHW is the only Model 4 hospital that has only one registrar (senior doctor) working during a night shift.<\/p>\n
He explained that smaller Model 3 hospitals often have two registrars.<\/p>\n
The registrar on duty on the night Mr Kennedy had the seizure told the court that if he had examined Mr Kennedy himself, he would not have prescribed Augmentin.<\/p>\n
However, Dr Fitzgerald pointed out that registrars face a large “cognitive burden” when operating as the sole senior doctor.<\/p>\n
He told the inquest that he had asked for additional registrars for the emergency department multiple times since this incident, “but I have been unable to secure funding as recently as six weeks ago”.<\/p>\n
Mr Goff agreed with the recommendations by both lawyers that this case be treated as an instance of medical misadventure.<\/p>\n
He said the main issue was that a “connection was not drawn between the seizure and Augmentin”.<\/p>\n
He said it was a “tragic case” and that whilst he appreciated the frankness and honesty from the report and the doctors, the delay in publishing it meant “the good has gone out of it”.<\/p>\n
The coroner then returned a verdict of medical misadventure.<\/p>\n
He concluded by speaking directly to Mr Kennedy’s family, who were present for the inquest, and said: “You shouldn’t have lost your son”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An inquest into the death of a 41-year-old man, who died due to an allergic reaction to an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-501198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}