Irish hospital patients in settings not acceptable in prison, professor says

Patients in Irish hospitals are subjected to conditions that would not be acceptable in Mountjoy Prison, the co-director of Trinity St James’s Cancer Institute has said.

John Kennedy, a professor in oncology, said it was vital to improve healthcare infrastructure to make the system more resilient in the face of future pandemics.

Prof Kennedy said the Covid-19 crisis has highlighted a number of issues in Irish healthcare, the first of which was the layout of acute hospitals.

“We do not have hospitals that are constructed to deal with modern medicine. We have patients in wards with six beds and one toilet. What do you think Covid is going to do when it gets in there? That’s unacceptable. You wouldn’t accept that in Mountjoy,” he said.

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“And these are sick people. That’s unbelievable. I believe we have had a big deficit in infrastructure, buildings and then when Covid arrives you’ve now got a facility that no matter how big it is, it is incapable of dealing with that. Everything gets massively disrupted.”

Prof Kennedy was speaking during the 12th annual cancer conference, which was held in Dublin city on Friday.

The impact of Covid-19 on cancer services was a key focus of discussions, with Prof Kennedy saying he was “concerned” about the potential another wave of the virus could have on the system.

“It might mean that we get back to a situation, if we have a very severe outbreak of flu and Covid, that staff numbers are way down,” he said.

“If staff numbers are way down, you don’t get operations done. Cancer operations get cancelled. It could be very serious. Vaccination and preparation are key. It shouldn’t be an emergency situation every winter.”

Addressing the audience, Mark Lawler, a professor at Queen’s University Belfast, said it’s “an absolute disgrace” that Ireland does not have electronic patient records.

“If we’re talking about doing something to help patients, that would actually help,” he said.

Speaking on the same topic, Prof Kennedy said electronic records were much safer for patients as they are more easily accessible and require less interpretation of handwriting.

“I call an Indian takeaway and they know who I am, they know what I’ve ordered previously and they say afternoon to me. The local takeaway is more electronically adept than our hospitals are,” he said.

“We have made some progress in this area with radiology, we have a national imaging system which a large majority of hospitals, though not all, participate in. We should be able to follow and track and analyse and report.”

John O’Leary, a pathologist who has stage four pancreatic tumours, said the pandemic was “extremely isolating for people with cancer”.

“My family wasn’t allowed to come to consultations with me. I was essentially on my own. My treatment journey was on my own. Patients were extremely afraid. They were in dread,” he said.