Audrey Finnegan’s accommodation as a junior doctor was provided by the NHS and contaminated by asbestos. Jennifer Trueland reports exclusively on one woman’s fight for compensation and search for colleagues who may also have been affected.
When Audrey Finnegan started her second medical job as a junior house officer in Glasgow she was shown to the hospital accommodation that would be her home for the next month.
Frankly speaking, it was a building site.
‘It was covered in plastic sheeting, there were panels missing in the ceiling,’ she says. ‘I was told that they were removing asbestos, which I knew was dangerous, but really, you think that the NHS wouldn’t [let] you live there if it wasn’t safe.’
That was February 1986. Some 23 years later, when she was 46 years old, Dr Finnegan — by this time a GP in East Kilbride and a mother-of-three — was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, an asbestos-related form of lung cancer.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde agreed last month to pay a ‘substantial’ sum of money to Dr Finnegan in an out-of-court settlement, following legal action, which had taken the best part of two years to conclude.
And now Dr Finnegan — whose condition has forced her to retire from the job she loved — is trying to reach as many of her former colleagues as possible to warn them to look out for the symptoms of this rare cancer.
Time bomb
There were, she says, other junior doctors as well as allied health professionals staying at the nurses’ home at Glasgow’s (now closed) Belvidere Hospital. She fears that others may have been affected, but might not yet know it.
‘People think that mesothelioma is a disease associated with boiler makers and plumbers and, in Glasgow, with the ship-building industry. It’s also more common in older men. But I was 46 when I was diagnosed, and I’m a woman and I’m a doctor. It’s an occupational health issue wherever you’re working,’ she explains.
Ironically, Dr Finnegan was working in the respiratory unit at Belvidere as part of her medical junior house officer post at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, her second job since graduating the year before.
She was on call one night in three and was, she says, only in the residences to sleep: ‘During the day I was on the ward, of course, and when I wasn’t on call I spent as much time as possible at my parents’. I wasn’t there very much, but it was enough.’
For the next few years, Dr Finnegan led a busy and happy life. She completed her GP training in Fife, married her anaesthetist boyfriend, whom she had met at Glasgow University, and they had three children.
It was only when she reached her mid-40s that she noticed all was not well. ‘I used to go running twice a week, and I found I was getting out of breath — not all the time, just going up hills. Then sometimes when I was out on home visits I’d have to stop to catch my breath after climbing stairs.
‘I thought I was just getting older and unfit — I was swimming 50 lengths a week to try to get fitter — but I knew that something wasn’t right.’
She checked her own peak flow reading — and was shocked to see it was around half of what it should be.
‘I used to demonstrate it to patients, so knew that it was around 530, but I was getting a reading of 250,’ she says. She went to her own GP who suspected asthma and gave her an inhaler; it didn’t help. Meanwhile, she was noticing that her symptoms became worse at altitude — and that on her twice-weekly runs she was falling behind, where before she had been a leader of the pack.
A colleague suggested she attend a respiratory clinic and a chest X-ray showed abnormalities suggestive of a large right pleural effusion. Even then, she had no idea what was coming.
‘I actually thought it might be ovarian cancer,’ she says. ‘So I was actually quite relieved when a CT scan of the abdomen area was OK. But a CT scan of the chest showed lumpy pleura, so I had a biopsy.
‘I was surprised when I got the diagnosis, although the doctor had warned me that she thought it was going to be something sinister. I didn’t really have many symptoms — I hadn’t lost any weight and although I was tired, I thought that was normal for a working GP and a mum-of-three.’
She was also, she says, upset that it was the health service that had put her in danger. ‘It didn’t seem fair or right — I was trying to help people, but my employer wasn’t looking after me.’
Tainted memories
Following chemotherapy, an operation to remove her right lung, pericardium and her diaphragm, and five weeks’ right hemithoracic radiotherapy, Dr Finnegan wanted to find a way of warning others who might be in the same position.
She contacted a firm known for successful work with the charity Clydeside Action on Asbestos.
‘I’m not the sort of person who would think of going down a legal route normally, but it seemed the only thing to do. I had to retire from a job I loved 13 years early. And every day I feel the consequences of not having two lungs — and it was the big one that was removed.
‘I had to tell my children, I had to tell my parents — it’s been very hard for everyone. And I feel that it’s tainted my past. I look back and think that when I married and had my children, when I did my GP training, all the time, these changes were going on inside me.
‘And I was the GP; I was the one who was supposed to be sorting things out for other people — so it was very hard to be a patient.’
Although she can no longer practise as a GP, Dr Finnegan is working part-time with medical students in Glasgow, teaching communication skills among other things, which she thoroughly enjoys.
Putting the legal case behind her is, she says, a big weight off her mind, she says. ‘I’m relieved it’s over.’
She is, however, well aware of the generally poor prognosis with mesothelioma. ‘I’m living with uncertainty and that will continue. I just want others to be aware that this is a deadly — and sneaky — disease, which can affect doctors too.’
The UK charity Clydeside Action on Asbestos provides expert advice and assistance to those with asbestos-related disease and their families. For more information visit www.clydesideactiononasbestos.org.uk/
Asbestos is the single greatest cause of work-related deaths in the UK, according to the Health and Safety Executive.
Visit www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos and www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/hiddenkiller for full details of the dangers and how they can be avoided.
Medico-Legal News Source: BMA
