MEDICAL SERVICES IN IRELAND IN SHAMBLES
(Even our Minister for Health agrees that there is a crisis in our health service. It's more like an emergency to those who have spent days on trollys in almost all of our A&E departments)
21 June 2007
Irish healthcare system corrupt, says world expert
Over 100 doctors apply for new consultant posts
'MRSA stole a huge chunk of my son's life'
10 June 2007
Services to sick children to be reduced in Crumlin Hospital
Churches are against the government's plan to allow the 'thick neck in the mercedes' to screw the sick
THE AMERICANS ARE COPYING OUR HEALTH SERVICE!!! 07 June 2007
31 Jan 2007
Operations cancelled because of shortage of beds...(DON'T get sick in Ireland!) More
07 Feb 2007
OUR HEALTH SYSTEM AFTER 10 YEARS OF FIANNA FAIL AND PD's
Alzheimer's patients are left without hot showers for over a month... More
Revealed: the scandal of our maternity services... More
Unnecessary hysterectomies scandal
Council to publish findings of misconduct on Neary doctors... More
Consultant and nurses spark war of words... More
Carers’ survey: elder abuse common... More
Survey shows huge disparity in nursing home charges... More
HSE (Health Service Executive) bids to ease midwife boycott fears... More
Harney denies climb-down in consultants row... More
Risk equalisation essential to VHI future, chief warns... More
Chemists fear for safety when treating addicts... More
€1m scanner lies idle in hospital laundry room... More
Nursing homes in east now cost €871 a week... More
28 Jan 2007
SCANDAL IN HEALTH SERVICE
Money is everything...Patients are nothing...
CAN you have your cake and eat it? Yes, you can. At least if you are a hospital consultant and you happen to have a gold-plated, category 2, contract of employment with the State. There you get the benefit of secure State employment, you can look forward to a lucrative public service pension on retirement, and you also have a right to engage in private practice as well: all at the same time.
(Don't forget...Our government have had 10 YEARS to fix this.)
More
HEALTH SERVICE...HSE 'trolley watch' ignores 75pc of those waiting in A&E... More
HEALTH SERVICE DEBACLE 25 Jan 2007
Overworked doctors put lives at risk, says Drumm... More
Harney not prepared to let consultant contract talks continue to drag on... More
Children’s hospital ‘very interested’ in private proposal... More
HSE to begin public nursing home inspections... More
Nursing home patients were treated ‘appallingly’... More
Health service has employment ceiling not recruitment embargo, says official... More
More shambles... More
Cancer care plan 'way behind' on deadlines...
HEALTH Minister Mary Harney is under increasing pressure after a leaked plan revealed the national cancer care plan will fail to meet all of its deadlines.
The internal report from the HSE has shown that the Government's €400m cancer plan is a shambles, with no hope of it being completed on time or on budget. It also highlighted the poor working relationship between the health department and the HSE.
Last night the minister attempted to defend her position and claimed it was out of date, despite only being presented to health chiefs on December 7.
More
Health premiums set for increase as Charlie gets tough...
VHI subscribers could face steeper premium increases as Charlie McCreevy signalled a new "get tough" approach with the health insurer yesterday.
The EU Commissioner clashed with his close friend Health Minister Mary Harney - calling into question her handling of the increasingly troubled health insurance market here.
He warned the Government that it could face sanctions if it did not change the rules to allow more competition for the VHI. Mr McCreevy revealed the European Commission is preparing to take action against the Government over what it sees as an abuse of VHI's dominant position.
More
MRSA study will cost €1.5m...
PATIENTS could be screened to establish if they are carriers of bugs like MRSA before they are admitted to a hospital bed.
The use of rapid MRSA detection machines is one of a number of preventative measures being examined by a new research team, who will investigate the causes of hospital acquired infections and how to tackle them.
The team of five experts will carry out its work over the next four years, with the help of €1.5 million funding from the Health Research Board (HRB).
More
Quarter of patients 'are unhappy at A&E service'...
A QUARTER of patients who attended A&E departments in the last year were dissatisfied with their experience, a new independent survey has revealed.
The study, commissioned by the Health Service Executive (HSE), found that half the group had to wait over three hours to be examined by a doctor, and were more likely to have received insufficient information, advice or pain relief.
More
Views from the trolley...
IT is distressing to hear bitterness in the voices of nurses as they question the realities of our hospitals as interpreted by officials of the Health Service Authority.
We have claim and counter-claim, self-congratulation followed by scornful dismissal.
A week ago, the Executive announced that the number of patients on trolleys was down by around 30pc, compared to last year. The Irish Nurses Organisation responded by pointing out that, at that very moment, 321 patients were lanquishing on trolleys.
More
Surgery cancelled for over 40,000 patients...
THE Government's health reform agenda has been branded "an utter failure" after new figures showed more than 40,000 operations were cancelled between the beginning of 2004 and the summer of 2006.
The criticism came from Fine Gael's health spokesman Dr Liam Twomey after the figures were released by the Health Service Executive (HSE).
They showed that in 2004, 15,107 elective (planned) operations were cancelled. In 2005, the figure rose to 15,610, and in just the first six months of last year, the figure was 8,213.
More
An elective care system...Indo Editorial... More
Hospital superbug is linked to elderly man's death...
MRSA contributed to the death of an elderly man who was hospitalised after he was burnt in an accident involving a hot water bottle, an inquest heard yesterday.
However, the man's family was not told that he was even suffering from the hospital bug.
Retired fire officer Raymond Finnegan (72), of Stameen Lawns, Drogheda, Co Louth, fell down a flight of stairs at his home while carrying a hot water bottle on June 25, 2005.
More
Care staff suspended over ligature death...
THREE staff members have been suspended at a north Cork care home where a 65-year-old woman died last June after being asphyxiated by a ligature strapping her to a chair.
Two nurses were suspended on full pay about a week after Hannah Comber suffocated after becoming entangled in straps binding her to a special chair at Heatherside Hospital near Buttevant, Co Cork, on June 22.
More Misery and the health service...
LIKE the traumatised victim of a car crash condemned to watch the event over and over again in slow motion, we seem destined to continually address some freshly highlighted failing of our costly health service.
A pattern repeats itself. Public attention is drawn to individual misfortune, as in the Leas Cross case, or a patient's long hours spent on trolleys, or a death caused by MRSA.
Then we are reminded of the huge sums being spent on health and the inability to deliver value.
More Mum recalls her nine-month wait for results...
A MOTHER who may be at risk of cancer spoke yesterday of her agonising nine-month wait for test results.
Trish Williams (44), right, from Blarney St, Cork was devastated when her GP told her her cervical smear test indicated she could have pre-cancerous cells.
"I went for the test last April but the test results were not returned until the middle of December," said the mother of one.
She now faces yet another wait after a second test to find out if she needs to have a colposcopy and undergo treatment to destroy abnormal cells which could over time develop into cancer.
More How key health service report has fared...
Prof Niamh Brennan made a series of recommendations in 2003 in the Health Service report. Have they been acted upon, ignored or partially addressed?
Here is a quick run-through.
Recommendation: There needs to be an accelerated programme of investment in information systems to extend SAP and PPARS to all major spending agencies.
More Department's shameful attitude could be a matter of life or death...
ALTHOUGH we have one of the highest death rates of cervical cancer in Europe, there has been a notable lack of urgency tackling the problem.
A perception somehow has taken hold that cervical cancer is a second class form of the disease. It clearly has not got the priority it deserves. It can affect relatively young women, often mothers who leave children behind.
Two shameful points stick out: Firstly the Republic has no organised national screening programme; and women face expensive GP fees just to have tests carried out.
More Fury over €100m for new health advisers
HSE tenders for experts to show how to run more efficient service.
HEALTH chiefs plan to pay advisers €100m to tell them how to run the ailing system.
The Irish Independent has learned the Health Service Executive (HSE) has tendered for a panel of financial experts to tell them how to govern the creaking service.
The development is bound to raise serious questions about why such costly expertise is needed.
More
The HSE, its advisers and the odd case of the missing zero...
HEALTH chiefs are backpedaling furiously after it was revealed they are planning to spend up to €100m on financial consultants.
They are now claiming that there was an "administrative error" in the official Government tender and the estimated value range should have been a maximum of €10m.
The clarification was issued after the Irish Independent revealed the HSE was planning to spend the huge sum on financial consultants to tell them how to run the ailing service.
More
Chemists row set to scupper price cuts...
A ROW between the pharmacists' union and the Health Service Executive (HSE) could scupper planned cuts in the price of medicines for consumers.
The Irish Pharmaceutical Union (IPU) has asked members not to co-operate with the HSE in negotiations and has demanded a meeting with Health Minister Mary Harney.
A copy of a letter sent by the IPU to its 1,600 members states: "This is a very serious development and the union is consulting with its legal advisers on the matter, and all the committees of the union will be meeting on Sunday, January 21, to consider future action and strategy.
More
Hospital bills are held back over stand-in staffing row
(I, myself got a bill for E60 from Tallagh Hospital. I had a pain in my stomach for a year while I waited for a scope test after the doctor to whom I first presented told me that I should be careful in case it turned to cancer. I haven't paid the bill and have been threatened with court. I can't wait to tell the world about our great Health Service...and there's more...I could write a whole webpage just from my own experience.)
BILLS have not been issued by the biggest hospital in the west for the past six weeks because of a row over replacement of staff on maternity and sick leave.
The failure by HSE West to replace staff in the clerical, administrative and financial sections of University College Hospital Galway has resulted in new bills for patients who have left the hospital since the end of November lying untouched.
More
Deadly drugs mix given to half of elderly patients
MORE than half of elderly Irish patients in hospitals are being prescribed a potentially deadly cocktail of medicines by their doctors.
A study has found that 52pc of patients were receiving drugs that could interact with another medicine being taken for a different ailment.
More...Irish Independent
'Smear result took so long I assumed it was clear - but I was wrong'
SINEAD Jeffrey (right) first had a smear test in Australia when she was 21.
To her, a three-week wait for the results was normal.
But when she returned home to Ireland she was shocked to find the system radically different here.
After having a smear test in Dublin, she didn't hear anything back for weeks and presumed that it had come back clear. But a letter from her GP 12 weeks later told her that it wasn't.
More...Irish Independent
Irish hospitals rampant with MRSA
AN Evening Herald sports journalist died of the hospital bug MRSA, an inquest has heard.
Father-of-five Tommy Murdiff (52), was struck down by the infection shortly before Christmas two years ago.
He had been in and out of hospitals over the preceding eight months with heart problems and also had to have a toe amputated.
Dublin City Coroner Brian Farrell told the court there was "no doubt" Mr Murdiff was infected while he was in hospital.
More...Irish Independent
Woman took own life after bed delay, claim family
THE family of a woman who committed suicide in a hospital believe her "extreme distress" after her bed was given to another patient influenced her decision to take her life.
Heartbroken relations of Anne Carroll (37) have expressed serious concern that she did not get the support she needed from staff at Cork University Hospital in the days before she died.
Ms Carroll, who suffered from bipolar disorder, hanged herself in a wardrobe at the hospital on October 17, 2004. Just over a month earlier after she had overdosed on tablets and tried to stab herself.
More...Irish Independent
Restore hospital facilities, Dail marchers demand
MORE than 600 campaigners gathered outside Leinster House yesterday to highlight the downgrading of Monaghan Hospital.
The streets outside the Dail were crowded with demonstrators waving placards in support of the hospital which has suffered a stripping of services in recent years. But the Government is adamant it will not be restoring any of the lost services.
Spokesman Peadar McMahon said the current level of service at the hospital - which cannot carry out emergency surgery - is unsafe and locals fear there could be another tragic death.
More...Irish Independent
Children wait 4 YEARS for Psychiatric assessment
GOVERNMENT claims that psychiatrists are to blame for long waiting lists for children with mental problems sparked a furious row between ministers and health experts last night.
Children are waiting up to four years for psychiatric assessment in parts of the country, an investigation by RTE's Prime Time found.
More...Irish Independent
Public patients on waiting list refuse free treatment
As many as 386 patients in the mid-west turned down the offer for a number of reasons, including the fact they were elderly and were unwilling to travel.
A spokesman for Limerick Regional Hospital said 295 patients in the region had not replied to contact letters or could not be treated due to medical reasons. Some 160 patients have now agreed to be treated and would be given dates shortly.
More...Irish Independent
Private nursing home patients 'unfairly treated'
MORE than 4,800 people in private nursing homes in receipt of enhanced subvention are being unfairly treated under current legislation, writes Eilish O'Regan. Cork Fine Gael councillor Colm Burke claimed yesterday that these residents should only have to pay a maximum of €120 of their pension every week.
More...Irish Independent
Mentally ill cut out of €1bn scheme
(This is madness!)
THE Department of Health has been attacked as mean-spirited for not extending to community psychiatric patients the €1bn repayment scheme for elderly people who were illegally charged for long-stay care.
The Health Services Executive made the first repayments to an estimated 70,000 people who were illegally charged for a public bed in nursing or residential homes, in the past fortnight.
More...Sunday Independent
Children find it hard to locate nurses for help
(If it's not the elderly who are not getting a proper service, it's the children. All our government can do is send out their spin doctors to make more empty promises.) SOME children in hospitals are experiencing difficulties contacting nurses for help with basic needs, particularly pain relief.
If their parents were not around, they relied on passer-bys or shouting in the hope of being heard. The same problems were highlighted in previous research on hospitals in the UK - carried out 30 years ago.
More...Sunday Independent
Overcharged patient gives €125,000 to care system
(First, the state robs them and then when found out, they encourage them to give it back.) AN elderly patient overcharged by the State for a stay in long-term care has donated an astonishing €125,000 back to the care system, even though the Health Service Executive (HSE) did not say how the money will be used.
The HSE is set to hand back over €30m to patients who were overcharged by the end of the year. But it is also asking them to donate a portion of their settlements to its special donations fund.
More...Sunday Independent
Behind the garbled grammar and incoherent thought processes which characterise this cynical buffoon, what emerged was that he didn't deny the figure. Seven. Hundred. Million. Pounds.
Inspections 'lacking' at units for disabled
AS many as 8,000 people with a disability, including 400 children, are living in residential homes which are not subject to any outside inspections, writes Eilish O'Regan. The lack of inspection of these homes - where some residents may be forced to go their rooms at 6pm in the evening - is a matter of serious concern, Deirdre Carroll of Inclusion Ireland warned yesterday.
More...Irish Independent
Seven nursing homes have closed down over last year
SEVEN nursing homes have gone out of business in the past year.
The number of private nursing homes operating now is 436 compared to 443 last year.
Some of these homes were refused official re-registration and a number have closed with prosecutions pending.
One of these homes is Leas Cross in north Dublin where serious neglect was exposed in 2005. If conditions are attached to a home's registration they must be publicly displayed.
More...Irish Independent
Obstetrician removed 129 wombs over 25 years
The Lourdes Hospital report revealed that 188 women had their wombs removed between 1974 and 1998 - the 129 removed by Dr Neary was more than 23 times the national average.
The report's 3,885 pages reveal him to have been a surgeon whose methods and supremacy went unchallenged for decades.
More... Irish Indo:
HSE sends test samples to UK due to 'unacceptable turnaround time' here
The HSE yesterday said "arrangements" were being made to refer the samples from women in Co Kerry to two private laboratories, one of which is in the UK. This was because of concern about the "unacceptable turnaround time for conventional smears in the southern area and also because the laboratory at CUH could not facilitate the more up-to-date testing practices in use by most GPs in Kerry.
More... Irish Indo:
Cancer woman vows to fight legal threat over book
(The hospitals reaction...run by the Sisters of (NO) Mercy...is to take this woman to court for telling the truth about the conditions...of all the media comments that I have heard regarding this controversy no one said that she was wrong.
You only have to read the articles on this page to know that we have a 'third world' health service...for the poor that is...the wealthy are seen to immediately.)
Solicitors for the Mater have written to Ms Byrne, whose book 'If it Were Just Cancer' has already sold more than 5,000 copies and is set to be reprinted by Veritas publishers.
In it, she is very critical of standards of cleanliness at the Mater during her stay there in 2001, prompting solicitors William Fry, acting on behalf of the Mater, to say her "exaggerated" comments amount to defamation. But Ms Byrne told RTE's 'Liveline' yesterday she would not be changing a word in the book and stood over her criticisms - while acknowledging the care she got from staff.
More... Irish Indo:
Third HSE Leas Cross death report may raise even more questions
(What ever you do in your life time...DON'T GET OLD, SICK AND POOR IN IRELAND.)
But, with septicaemia poisoning his body and Alzheimer's ravaging his mind, the controversy over his treatment was beyond the comprehension of Mr McKenna.
His brother Dan Moore said: "Peter was sent to Leas Cross and 13 days later we got his body back, dehydrated, blackened and neglected. There was no explanation about why his body was like that. We were told he was dead and that was it."
More... Irish Indo:
PASSING THE BEDPAN...NOBODY NOTICES THAT IT'S FULL
Radical treatment, not more beds, is Drumm's remedy for health services...Click
Appointment of Prof Brendan Drumm ...Click
Report after report...no action...Click
Wider system failure at fault ...Click
Put them in the hallway ...Click
Irish Mirror 14/04/06:
Five top brain surgeons were threatening to quit yesterday, claiming their department was close to collapse.
A damning report to be finally published FOUR YEARS after it was commissioned is expected to back their concerns.
The five say neurosurgery at Dublin's Beaumont Hospital must be dramatically improved or their unit will quit.
*Surgery equipment is faulty and outdated.
*Waiting lists are running into years.
*Allocated operating time is less than it was 28 years ago.
*Critical theatre instruments are in short supply and
*There is a major shortage of consultants and beds.
(Don't forget that this person wasn't one of our many underprivileged)
> Irish Indo 14/04/06:
Martina Devlin
Top novelist and critic Martina Devlin spent 18 hours in a hospital A&E department waiting to be treated for severe stomach pains. Here, she recounts her harrowing and dehumanising experience
I'M waiting to be wheeled into the operating theatre as I write this. Under normal circumstances the idea of going under the knife would terrify me, but that was before spending almost 20 hours on a trolley in Accident and Emergency.
It was such a brutalising process that, frankly, anything has to be an improvement.
It will be a relief finally to go somewhere I am guaranteed a bed. Even one in an operating theatre.
Accident and Emergency is like a nuclear fall-out shelter after the bomb has dropped. There is such mayhem swirling around, such an acute shortage of staff and beds, such a sense of over-stretched medics coping by no more than the skin of their teeth, that you feel nobody will ever get around to examining and diagnosing you.
The first time I left my trolley to give a urine sample, I returned to find my pillow gone.
"Shortage of pillows," shrugged the nurse. I was found one 10 hours later.
The second time I left my trolley to go to the bathroom, I returned to find someone else in my trolley.
"Shortage of beds," shrugged the porter. "Emergency case."
I had just been told by a surgeon that I would be operated on as a matter of urgency once arrangements could be made. That didn't count as an emergency? Not in the topsy-turvy world of A&E.
Last week, Mary Harney admitted there was a national emergency in A&E departments throughout the country.
Tanaiste, emergency doesn't begin to describe it. Try meltdown. And I was one of the lucky ones, the medics told me repeatedly, because a surgeon examined me at 10pm at night - nearly 18 hours after I had first presented myself at 4.30am, doubled up with stomach spasms, at St Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin.
I couldn't believe my eyes at the scene when I arrived, it was like a surrealist painting by Hieronymous Bosch: patients in various stages of distress and undress lay in a tangle of limbs and contorted faces on trolleys strewn everywhere.
Not a strip of corridor was left unclaimed - there was even a man parked right outside the women's toilet, so close I almost tripped and landed in his lap.
Relatives sat alongside patients holding their hands and looking angry, frightened, bewildered, panicked. And most of all, helpless in the face of this maelstrom.
There was scarcely a doctor in sight - I encountered more security guards than doctors.
But there seemed to be any number of nurses, uniformly harassed, shimmying their way through the human debris.
One went off to find me some medication and was intercepted by another saying "we need blood bags urgently" - and off she raced to do that instead.
She never did remember me. I appealed to another nurse finally. Later I saw a woman who had been involved in a car crash and was clearly in shock lying moaning on a trolley.
Nearby a man swept the floor, occasionally jolting against her due to lack of space, and inadvertently adding to her distress. There was absolutely no privacy, let alone the peace and quiet everyone needs when ill.
I was squeezed into a corner between the service lift and the nurses' station, in a space too small for my trolley, so that every time, without fail, when someone passed they banged into me.
Often it was a clatter from another trolley that went clanging into my side.
And still we all waited for someone to treat us: to move us through the A&E system and into the wards or back on the street. People were rocking and groaning alongside me, and by and large nobody took a blind bit of notice. I had the sense the A&E staff have lost that layer of empathy which characterises people in the medical profession, perhaps an inevitable coping mechanism under such onslaught. They are the final bulwark before utter collapse. And it has anaesthetised them.
Medics hurtled around trying to deal with the neediest cases - not always clear-cut when people were waiting hours to be diagnosed - and often, as is the way with human nature, responding to those people who complained loudest.
I was given a little pain relief at once and left lying as other, more important cases were attended to. But as hour drained into hour and still no real diagnosis, the pain intensified.
I had stomach cramps which might have been due to kidney stones, or could have been bowel-related. They couldn't tell until X-rays were taken, but when I was wheeled off for X-ray after four hours I only reached the doors of the department before being sent back to A&E.
An emergency case has come in, we'll get back to you in half an hour.
Three hours later and still no sign of an X-ray. By now unable to tolerate the spasms of pain, moaning audibly, I begged a nurse for another shot of analgesic.
As before, there was no free cubicle to administer the injection to my rear, so it happened more or less in full public view. The nurse tried to hold a scrap of blanket in front of me as I slid down my trousers, but there wasn't much left to the imagination.
Privacy is one of the first casualties in A&E. Afterwards, feeling a bit better, I lifted my bag off the floor to search for something - and found it was filthy. So much for hygiene.
Eventually some 12 hours after arrival, I was wheeled into a curtained cubicle where there was a little respite from the pandemonium outside.
I can't tell you how blissful it felt. The doctor on duty - could there really only be one? - came to see me and debated sending me home because the X-rays which had been taken finally had proved clear for kidney stones.
He was on the verge of discharging me but I pointed out that I was still in pain, which meant there could be something they'd missed. He mused aloud that it might be an appendix problem and said he'd get a surgeon to check me out.
So now I was waiting for a surgeon. Not too bad, that only took a couple of hours, but it was now 10pm, nearly 18 hours since I had first arrived at A&E. The surgeon, capped and gowned, was the first medic who, I felt, really believed me when I explained I was in considerable pain and worried there was something seriously wrong with me.
Appendix was the most likely culprit and would require an operation as soon as possible, he said, but he'd like a second opinion.
Then he looked me in the eye and I was struck by his expression because it was riddled with an emotion I hadn't expected to see - shame.
"The problem is we have no free beds," he said.
'So shall I go home and return in the morning?" I asked.
"You're not well enough to be discharged, I couldn't take that risk." He shook his head.
Good grief - he couldn't be suggesting - not a second night on a trolley in A&E? He was.
"You're at the top of the list for a bed upstairs in a ward, as an emergency, but I can't guarantee one will come free," he said, that combination of shame and embarrassment shining again in his eyes.
"Do you often have to tell people this?" I asked him.
"All the time, it's frustrating," he admitted.
SO I resigned myself to another night of what felt like Armageddon whirling around me. At least, I thought, I'm curtained off now, I have some shreds of privacy and, while it's noisy, nobody can cannon into the side of my trolley.
The surgeon returned with a colleague to discuss the possibility of appendicitis. They thought gynaecological problems were also possible, and there was a suggestion of operating that night. The second surgeon noticed I couldn't stop trembling, something I'd been unaware of until that moment.
"Are you cold?"
"No."
"Are you frightened?" "No." "What's wrong?"
"It's just that I've been here since the middle of last night," I explained. "It gets to you, this place."
When they left I staggered up to use the bathroom, shuffling along holding my fluid bag in one hand and the wall with the other.
I returned to find my bed occupied and my bag missing.
This was after an absence of minutes, 10 at most. Panicked, I looked around at what seemed to me to be a sea of indifferent faces, trying to discover what was happening.
" Someone's in my bed," I said.
"Emergency case, it had to take priority," said a porter who, I now realised, had opened my bag and was going through the contents. For some reason this upset me enormously - a combination of feeling the last vestiges of my privacy had been violated, and the casual implication that I wasn't much of a priority.
"Why have you taken everything out of my bag without asking me?" I wanted to know. Before he could answer, a nurse spoke up.
"You were gone a long time at the bathroom," she said.
"There was no toilet paper, no soap, no paper towels," I wailed. "I rang the bell. I couldn't leave the bathroom until someone brought me something to wash with."
Around us, people suspended their conversations to watch the scene.
By now I couldn't help myself: humiliation, pain and misery welled up and I started to cry, and everybody stared, which made me sob all the harder. I just felt totally dehumanised.
I had an overwhelming sense of not mattering a jot to anyone in this black hole version of the health system. Finally someone realised I thought I'd be spending the night in A&E sitting on a chair.
"We've found you a bed. We're moving you upstairs to a ward," said a nurse. "That's why your bag is being checked, so we can make a note of your possessions."
The next day, waiting to be wheeled off for my operation (gynaecological, not appendix), I still feel traumatised by the experience. I'm certain that such a profoundly shocking prelude to admission must prolong recovery periods for patients.
In fact I escaped relatively lightly, all my doctors agreed. "Some people can spend four or five days on trolleys waiting to be diagnosed. And days again waiting to be operated on," said my surgeon.
"St Vincent's isn't the worst by a long shot - it's much worse in Tallaght or Beaumont," said my consultant.
"But the politicians say they have it under control."
And he allowed himself a wry smile.
Martina's email
Information@martinadevlin.com
'Lie-down' protest at Dáil to highlight A&E overcrowding
Breaking news.ie 14/04/2006:
A group of 495 people will today lie on the street outside the Dáil to represent the highest number of patients lying on trolleys on a single day this year.
The ’Lie Down And Be Counted’ stunt is organised by Patients Together which said it chose Good Friday to maximise public attendance.
The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) recorded 495 patients on trolleys in all Accident & Emergency departments on March 8.
It was the highest number since records began and exceeded the previous day’s tally of 455.
The Health Service Executive blamed the high numbers on winter vomiting bug cases and the unseasonal cold snap.
The INO’s ‘Trolley Watch’ figure hovered around the 260 mark this week.
Patients Together spokesperson Janette Byrne said ordinary people were suffering in the health service but were powerless to complain.
“Patients just want to be listened to. Everybody else had a union or lobby group to speak up for them but there are thousands of patients without a voice,” she explained.
Referring to the 1916 Rising leaders being commemorated on Easter Sunday, Ms Byrne commented: “Those men would be turning in their graves today if they saw what was happening in the country they gave their lives for.”
The noon protest is being supported by the INO and MRSA and Families.
Formed in October 2004, Patients Together has previously held candlelight vigils and delivered petitions to the Health Department to publicise the plight of patients.
09/05/04:
Doctor Paschal Carmody ran The East Clinic and Tinarana House Resort, Killaloe, Co. Clare. All last week on Radio 1, the "Liveline" program dealth with people complaining about the treatment they got and how they were ripped off by this doctor. Apparently this man was targeting large numbers of terminally ill cancer patients promising to cure them no matter what form of the disease they were suffering from and charging up to E20,000 for the service. No matter what the problem was, Dr. Carmody could solve it after he got his fee. It would seem from the callers to Liveline that he didn't cure anyone. and in some cases the problem was made worse. There was one instance where he gave a patient 6,000 TABLETS.
Carmody lives on a 300 acre estate in Killaloe and is a race-horse enthuasiast. Complaints had been made to The Irish Medical Council as far back as 1990 and he was finally struck off 2 weeks ago. This means that he was allowed to practise for 14 YEARS from the first complaint. I don't have time to go into all the details here but if you put in a search in Google for "Dr. Paschal Carmody", you will get more details.
As an aside, our government are now paying Carmody 9,000 a week for a premises to house illegal immigrants.
TOTAL SHAMBLES
69 yr old man with Legionaires desease spends 27 hours in casualty department of Tallagh Hospital. Three more days before the disease was diagnosed in Blanchardstown Hospital. Dies 5 weeks later. ( Around June 2003)
06/06/03 Daily Mirror: Six child cancer sufferers being turned away from Dublin Hospital every week due to health cuts.
06/06/03 Daily Mirror: Sex related diseases at an all time high in Ireland.
June 03 radio 1 news: 2yr old child dies after her operation was postponed due to staff shortages in Crumlin Hospital.
22/07/03 Indo: Hospitals cannot function properly for fear of mounting debts.
25/07/03 Indo: Woman has baby on roadside on the way to Cavan General Hospital from Monaghan. Monaghan Hospital cannot handle births.(This is the second incident of this nature. The last baby died.)
21/07/03 Indo:Ambulances have to wait up to 3 hours to get their trollys back because of bed shortages.
14/08/03 Indo:Naas General Hospital cannot open new extention because they don't have the money.
23/09/03 Radio 1 News: 37 People left on trollys as The Mather and Beaumount hospitals were forced to refuse patients due to lack of resources and overcrowding.( One shudders to think of what we would do in a Sep. 11 scenario.)
14/10/03: Recently reported in the Media that some older patients have to wait up to 7 YEARS to have hip replacement surgery.
15/10/03 Radio 1 News: Because Ireland has had a shortage of nurses for a number of years, we have had to employ 1000's from abroad and now that we have a supply, the authorities in St. Vincents Hospital want to charge those with cars 700 euros a year in parking charges.
20/10/03 Indo: Hospital waiting lists get longer after 70m euros spent.
11/11/03 Daily Mirror: 100 patients left on trolleys at Dublin hospitals, some for days, because health system is at breaking point.
Nov. 03 Radio 1 News: Doctors charge up to 65 euros to give FREE flu jab.
Radio 1 News 13/01/04: 150 patients waiting on trollys to be admitted to 6 Dublin hospitals.
16/01/04 Indo Headline: Example of how resources are being squandered by the Health service...Patients are being cared for in acute beds costing E3000-a-week when they could go to nursing homes for E700-a-week.
03/02/04 RTE TV Teletext: 300 patients on trollys and chairs waiting to be seen in the country's A&E departments.
5 DAYS IN NAAS HOSPITAL A&E
12/02/04 Liveline Radio 1:
This man was addmitted to Naas General Hospital on 25/01/04 suffering from a chest infection and asthma. He spent 5 days in the A&E department on a trolly...in fact, he never actually got into the hospital proper, as there were no beds. At one stage he went to the toilet and when he came back, his trolly had been taken by/for another patient. In the confusion he missed an evening meal and had to have food smuggled in to him by his father as taking food into the hospital is forbidden. At one point he had to eat his meal off the top of a dustbin because there were no tables etc.
Eventually he was discharged and left the hospital after 5 days never having been in a bed.
25/03/04 Leinster Leader: Nurses threaten to leave their posts in Naas Hospital if situation does not improve. One day last week there were 52 patients in the A&E dept...enough to fill two wards. ( This scenario has been festering (bad pun) for years.)
78 YR OLD WOMAN IN TALLAGH HOSPITAL
10/06/04 Irish Mirror:
Anyone with no medical knowledge would realise that a woman of 78 who is sick should AT LEAST be put in a bed if she enters a hospital. Not so in Ireland in the year 2004. Mary Kennedy's last days were the worst of her life. This unfortunate woman, who had the double missfortune to get sick in Ireland, ended up having to use a bedpan in a corridor in the midst of other patients... including drunks. It seems that this hospital is permanently overcrowded and that having 40 or so patients on trollys is a regular feature. Anyway, Mary spent 5 days on her trolly and when finally a bed was found for her, she died.
Again, medical knowledge isn't required to understand the extra trauma involved here and it's likely effects...one of the most important of which is not providing the facility whereby a sick person's relatives can be with their loved one in comfort in the final stages.
There are currently seven new units...at least 162 beds...around the country which cannot be used because of staff and finance shortages.
MEDICAL CARDS
28/04/04 Indo:
A Medical Card entitles the holders to free medical services and is generally for those on low incomes. Since this present PD/Fianna Fail government was first formed in 1997 the number of card holders has fallen by 97,246. Before the 2002 election this coalition promised to increase the numbers of card holders by 200,000. ( It dosn't matter to this government whether the poor and/or sick live and/or die in misery in the midst of plenty so long as they get to stay in power. ) BOTCHED OPERATION
19/06/04 Radio 1 News:
An inquest into the death of a nine-year-old Cavan girl has been told she died as a result of post-operative complications. Frances Sheridan returned to Cavan General Hospital last January complaining of pains three weeks after having her appendix removed. She was told the pain was probably a tummy bug and was sent home. She died 36 hours later. At the inquest today, part of the post mortem report by the State Pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy, was read out. Dr Cassidy said that part of Frances Sheridan's bowel had become trapped as post operative scar tissue healed. This eventually led to her choking to death on gastric contents. It has also emerged that the gardaí are investigating the matter and a file on the case will be sent to the DPP. The North Eastern Health Board is also conducting an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the young girl's death.
(The fact that two consultants were at loggerheads and the overcrowding factor in this hospital didn't help in this sad case.)
