The largest children's hospital in the State is seriously outdated and should be replaced, a report into its facilities has concluded.
The Pollock report on Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, Dublin says it provides "virtually no facilities for parents and relatives", its intensive care provision "is very limited", its wards are designed in such a way that they waste nurses' time, its outpatients' department has "grossly insufficient space" and many of its diagnostic facilities are not "up to current acceptable standards".
The report, by Dr Robbie Pollock, an international expert in health service provision and planning, is based on a ward-by-ward and facility-by-facility analysis of the physical infrastructure of the hospital.
Published in Dublin yesterday, it finds in ward after ward and facility after facility that space is between one and two thirds short of what it should be. The report was commissioned by the New Crumlin Hospital Group (NCHG).
The voluntary lobby of parents whose children attend the hospital was founded last year to seek its redevelopment by the end of 2009.
Speaking yesterday, Dr Pollock stressed the report was not intended to assess the health impacts of the physical inadequacies at the hospital."But," he said, "the defects and deficiencies in the hospital are very great indeed, and this after heroic efforts over the years to expand and improve facilities. I can see hardly any scope for improvement through 'patching' the present framework. There is absolutely no way in which currently accepted standards can be provided."
Mr Karl Anderson, chairman of the NCHG, said the report was in no way a criticism of the standards of care provided by staff at the hospital, which is described as "heroic".He said the hospital had been built in the 1950s. "Paediatric medicine has changed more than any other type of medicine in the intervening years."
In the 1950s it was standard practice that an ill child would be left in the care of the hospital by parents who would visit every two or three days.
Today it was standard that parents stayed with their child, actively participating in their care, Dr Pollock said.
"This is because children do better this way," he said.
His report, however, finds "there are virtually no facilities for parents and relatives either in the form of rest rooms and refreshment facilities or in the provision for overnight stay beside an ill child."
Some 123,729 children a year attended the hospital in 2002, an increase of 537 per cent on the 23,031 that attended in 1958.
In his commentary, Dr Brendan Drumm, consultant paediatrician at Our Lady's Hospital, said the report confirmed his view that the hospital was "totally unsuited for the provision of medical care for children". A spokesman said the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, agreed the infrastructure of Our Lady's Hospital was unacceptable and said a "major redevelopment was planned".
Dr Drumm said a national strategy on children's tertiary health care had never been drawn up in this State.
