Cancer coordinator untrained

By FRANCESCA MOLD

Sharon Reid's job was to make sure that all Gisborne women were enrolled on the national cervical screening register and that they had regular smears.

But it was not up to her to find out if the programme was working in reducing the number of women dying from cervical cancer in her region.

Ms Reid became the Tairawhiti cervical screening coordinator less than two years after beginning work for the programme as a data entry operator.

She achieved dramatic results in improving the number of women signed up, with enrolment rates reaching 94 per cent - the highest in the country.

But Ms Reid, who described her previous experience as working with computers at the Post Office and being a mother, told a Gisborne inquiry yesterday that she had no formal training or medical experience and there were times when she felt out of her depth.

As programme coordinator she was forced to rely on forming strong relationships with medical professionals to whom she could turn for advice when she was "stuck."

Ms Reid, who wept several times during her testimony, said her focus was on enrolling women and making sure they had smears, not on the incidence of abnormalities in the population she served.

When asked whether she understood that in order for a cervical smear to be effective it must be read properly, she replied: "Yes, and I trusted that they were."

The head of Tairawhiti Healthcare's public health unit, Dr Bruce Duncan, yesterday defended Ms Reid's role, saying that regardless of her qualifications on paper, she had demonstrated she could do the job.

Ms Reid told the inquiry she had become aware that the number of Tairawhiti women being diagnosed with high-grade cervical abnormalities rose sharply in 1997.

In fact, new figures from the Health Funding Authority show the rate of cervical cancer in Tairawhiti tripled in the years 1996-99, after being half the national average in 1991-95.

The rise occurred after the retirement of former Gisborne pathologist Dr Michael Bottrill.

But Ms Reid said she had believed the increase was because more women were enrolling on the register and having smears rather than misreporting of slides.

"I believed we were getting women who hadn't been seen before."

She said she had pleaded for statistics about incidence and mortality rates in a report presented to a programme managers' meeting in 1997 but received no response from the national manager or other coordinators.

The lawyer for women affected, Stuart Grieve, asked Ms Reid: "What on earth was the jolly use of having these managers' meetings if these relevant questions are not answered?"

Ms Reid replied: "We had so many operation issues at a management level, the statistics went by the wayside ...

"We just got on with the work of the day, which was operational. We didn't have time to do that statistical analysis."