Courses to train radiographers to do CT scans and mammograms have had to be cancelled because University College Dublin cannot get lecturers.
A shortage of radiographers with the necessary post-graduate training has cut the capacity of many hospitals to do CT scans.
It has also meant the breast cancer screening programme, BreastCheck, has had to be limited to women under 65 years of age (older women can get mammograms through referral by their GPs).
These shortages are preventing UCD's School of Diagnostic Imaging from training more people to reduce the shortages.
According to the school's director, Ms Kate Matthews, radiography departments are too hard pressed to release staff to lecture on the post-graduate courses.
In the past five years the number of CT scan machines has more than doubled, from 17 to 36 and each of these needs two radiographers to operate it.
People staying in St Anthony's Care of the Elderly Unit in St Joseph's Hospital, Clonmel, Co Tipperary, will have to move to nursing homes to make way for an acute medical admissions unit. Ironically, the patients are to lose accommodation because St Anthony's is "commissioned to a very high standard," the South Tipperary Hospitals Executive Committee heard recently.
The committee was told that St Anthony's would become a care of the elderly unit again when additional medical beds are available.
At next weekend's annual general meeting of the Hospital Pharmacists' Association Ireland, the president, Mr Andrew Barber will highlight the problems caused by shortages of medicines, such as tetanus vaccine and morphine, and will call for talks involving the association, the Department of Health and Children and the Irish Medicines Board.
Unfortunately we reported his speech, a copy of which he had sent in advance to us, yesterday giving HPAI members the impression that their a.g.m. is over. It isn't, and we're sorry.
Children having surgery at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, can now drive themselves from the ward to the theatre in cars supplied by the Little Tikes toy company. The aim is to make the hospital experience less daunting for children.
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