Madam, - Month by month, report after report, media criticism after media criticism, hospital consultants have become the scapegoat for the ills in our underfunded health service. Soon the result will be seen: demoralised, cynical and burnt-out senior hospital doctors like our colleagues in the UK, who are leaving and retiring early in their droves.
We all want a better and properly funded health service. Hospital consultants share their patients' concerns about long waiting times, inadequate facilities, overcrowded clinics and meagre resources.
The truth is that we still have an underfunded health service, compared to our European colleagues who are prepared to pay much higher taxes to fund better services. We urgently require more acute hospital beds, more step-down facilities, more long-stay beds in appropriate geriatric facilities, more hospital consultants and nurses to deliver these services, and appropriate use of primary care rather than the ongoing abuse of acute hospital emergency departments for minor ailments.
Are we prepared to pay more for our health services, and to direct resources appropriately to primary prevention, more acute hospital beds, more long-stay facilities and more front-line care providers?
In addition, there appears to be divide between administrators and clinicians, with a lack of communication and consultation. Many of the extra posts created in the health service have been in administration with a perceived lack of emphasis on providing additional front-line care. Yet there are still many consultants like myself who do not have an office or a secretary, who start their clinics early and finish late in an attempt to assess and treat the 50 or so patients who attend for hospital care during the allocated three-hour slot, and who operate during the evenings and weekends without receiving any of the contractual payments due for out-of-hours work.
Hospital consultants are advocates for the rights of their patients. Unbalanced media coverage and consultant-bashing is not helping those who are trying to provide the highest standard of care to patients on a shoestring budget. - Yours, etc.,
DARA KILMARTIN, Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon, Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Adelaide Road, Dublin 2.