Temple Street consultant continued surgery for months after concerns emerged
The consultant whose work at Temple Street children’s hospital is to be externally reviewed continued to carry out operations for months after concerns about their work first emerged.
The Health Service Executive has commissioned a UK expert to review surgeries carried out by the consultant after an internal review identified “serious spinal surgical incidents” in the service, it said on Monday. One child died following multiple procedures and others suffered serious postoperative complications.
Patient safety concerns were first raised following a “particularly serious” surgical incident in July 2022, according to a report by Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) – the hospital group responsible for paediatric care nationally – with another following in September that year. From that month, staff began raising concerns about outcomes for patients who were operated on by the consultant.
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The Big Read
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The best from Opinion
- In today’s head-to-head debate, Jen Hogan and Dr Leah O’Toole discuss whether homework has any benefits for primary schoolchildren?: Jen Hogan argues that homework instils unhealthy work and play habits. “There’s a notable change in the mood in this house since homework returned. (The kids aren’t that impressed either.) Goodbye free and easy evenings of summer; we’re back to the days of kitchen table battles, once again instilling unhealthy work, rest and play habits in our children, as the single worst thing about school takes hold.” Dr Leah O’Toole argues that if homework is to have a role, it needs to be reinvented. “When it comes to research on homework, there is such a range of evidence, both positive and negative, that conceivably it would be possible to champion any opinion.”
Culture and Life & Style highlights
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Letters to the Editor
Sir, – The most tiresome aspect of the budget cycle is surely the pattern of left-wing opposition TDs (salary €107,000) and the CEOs of State-funded social justice NGOs (average salary €120,000) uniting to tell us, with straight faces, that workers earning the average wage of €45,000 don’t need tax cuts and should instead continue to pay tax at the higher rate so that public spending can continue to rise. The latest to jump on this annual merry-go-round is Holly Cairns, leader of the Social Democrats, a party which claims to represent ordinary working people (News, September 14th).
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Public spending is already completely out of control, having risen from €77 billion in 2019 to €102 billion this year, about 20 per cent more than it was at the height of the Celtic Tiger. Perhaps Ms Cairns and others on six-figure public sector salaries can clarify: exactly what level does public spending have to reach before private sector workers should expect any kind of significant tax cuts? – Yours, etc, BARRY WALSH, Clontarf, Dublin 3.
Podcast Highlights
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Book Review of the Day
- The Bible and Poetry: Translating words and contexts of the testaments: In Bible and Poetry, Michaël Edwards focuses on those books of the Old Testament with a pronounced lyrical character, such as the Song of Songs and the Psalms, and he remarks the points where the prose of Genesis or Isaiah switch to verse: “We find ourselves constantly in the presence of writings that invite us into the joy of words, into a well-shaped language, in a form that demands from us the attention that we give to poetry and awakens us to expectation.” And, “In its own way, and without being supernatural, poetry too is revelation.”
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