Madam, – In a Late Late Show interview some years ago, the wife of a former US ambassador to Ireland said the Irish had “no sense of outrage”. In present-day Ireland, citizens’ apparent stoical acceptance of systematic corruption and malpractice in politics, business and banking makes that opinion still valid. And nowhere is the accusation more applicable than in our toleration of a third-rate health service – in particular, the “system” governing AE departments in our hospitals.
The sheer inefficiency, waste, and duplication are obvious. But this is typical of the health service in general, into whose insatiable maw vast amounts of public money have been poured since the establishment of the HSE, with so little in return for those for whom it is supposed to cater – patients and their carers.
Like many of my fellow citizens I half-listened in recent years as the plight of our sick and elderly, faced by this inhumane and inefficient system, was discussed on the national airwaves in the innumerable “talk shows” which now appear to be the main outlet for national debate. If talk could cure the ills of this country, we would all be living in Hy Brasil. But, as ever, talk is cheaper than action and once we Irish have expended our energy on talking about a problem, we invariably sink once more into a stupor of indifference and toleration.
My recent experience of the AE system was in the company of my elderly mother. AE is like the Red Cow Roundabout. You need to go to an entirely different place but the “system” dictates that everyone must first “congregate” in AE, regardless of whether they are an accident or emergency case, in order to get eventually – if they are lucky – to where they need to be in hospital.
My mother had a GP’s letter recommending her immediate admission to Mayo General Hospital. Yet for two days, in severe pain, she was forced to run the gauntlet of gross duplication (her medical details alone were demanded and written down by seven different people in AE), lack of treatment, lack of privacy, lack of communication, lack of care, inadequate toilet facilities and a total lack of dignity. My mother died suddenly and unexpectedly a mere 32 hours after her ordeal in AE.
Is it not time to call time on the HSE as it is presently devised? Remove decisions on medical treatment and care from accountants and form-fillers to medical staff. Return the hospital management to the matrons and clinical staff who have the training to determine patients’ needs. Or, like the banking system, is the present system that governs the HSE all about money and greed — the same disease that has wrecked our economy — with the patient’s clinical care merely an appendage?
To an outsider like me it certainly looks that way.– Yours, etc,