CONSULTANTS attached to the new hospital in Tallaght are concerned that its status as a teaching hospital will be diminished by a lack of resources, even compared with what they have at the moment.
There are between 70 and 80 consultants attached to the Adelaide, Meath and National Children's hospitals, and they will be moving to the new hospital next August. They had a meeting with the new CEO, Dr David McCutcheon, last Saturday at which they raised their concerns.
These include the reduction of the number of acute hospital beds by 30 per cent, the reduction of the outpatients facility and the lack of a separate outpatients department for children, Prof Gerald Tomkin, a medical consultant in the Adelaide and Meath hospitals, told The Irish Times.
There was no approval yet for an MRI scanner, which meant patients would be subjected to the high radiation doses from a CT scanner, which produced less accurate results.
Although this was a designated teaching hospital, there was also no provision for teachers, he said. "To date there has not been a professorial unit even in medicine or surgery, and no provision has been made for professorial units in the pathology specialities."
Prof Tomkin expressed concern that "a huge head of steam" was building up to get the consultants to Tallaght without the necessary facilities. "The purpose of our move is to improve services and to further our representation as a famous teaching institution," he said. "To move to an institution that would not allow us to give at least as good a service as we give now would not be acceptable."
The CEO of Tallaght hospital, Dr McCutcheon, said: "It is fair to say the consultants have concerns. It is fair to say the hospital understands those concerns. The hospital is working with the Department of Health to solve them. We are very hopeful they will be resolved."