Irish people have lost their foremost patient advocate, a voice that constantly challenged the status quo, writes DR MUIRIS HOUSTON
THE SUDDEN and unexpected passing of Maurice Neligan is a huge shock.
Irish people have lost their foremost patient advocate, who since his retirement from surgical practice has campaigned vigorously for a better public health service.
Whether in his weekly column in The Irish Timeshealth supplement or through regular appearances on radio and television his was a voice that consistently challenged the status quo.
A 1962 graduate of UCD, Mr Neligan trained as a cardiothoracic surgeon and joined Eoin O’Malley and Keith Shaw at the national cardiac surgical centre in Dublin’s Mater hospital in 1971.
A pioneer in the field of congenital heart surgery following his appointment to Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin in 1974, he was responsible for two major firsts in Irish medicine: in 1975 he performed the first coronary artery bypass graft at the Mater, while in 1985 he was part of the team to carry out the Republic’s first heart transplant operation.
Mr Neligan was unique in that when he operated on a patient, they invariably came back to tell you how they felt they had got to know him personally. He put people at ease. They also sensed an underlying kindness and a palpable concern for their wellbeing.
A close medical colleague recalled yesterday how he “never once refused a referral and he never once inquired if the patient he was asked to see was public or private”.
In some ways he was the original “medical maverick”. Although one of the co-founders of the Blackrock Clinic, his involvement in the private hospital venture was primarily driven by a waiting-list crisis that developed at the Mater during the 1980s. With people dying while waiting for cardiac surgery, he reckoned that if those with private health insurance could be cared for at the new state-of-the-art facility, it would allow a greater number of public patients to be operated on in the Mater.
Everything he did in life he regarded as a learning process. While he was being recruited as a columnist for this newspaper he told me he did not think he would be able to write to a sufficiently high standard. Well he needn’t have worried: his “Heart Beat” column was always beautifully written and delivered on time. Hugely popular with readers, he mixed polemic with some lyrical descriptions of the family’s holiday home at Dooks, Co Kerry.
And how we loved his literary quotes from Ovid to Edmund Burke. Just a few weeks ago Mr Neligan wrote: “The pleasant ramble along the warm valleys of recollection inevitably brings you to the shadows, the memories of those gone. They are good memories, but sometimes they can be overwhelmingly sad. There are no hiding places on this road.”
We your colleagues, friends, patients and readers will miss you. But the greatest loss is for your beloved wife, Pat and the children. Ar dheis Dé go raibh do anam.