Sir, – The situation at the A&E departments of the country’s main public hospitals is intolerable. But there is no such problem in the country’s private hospitals.
The obvious solution is for the State to requisition private hospitals for public use. At the same time, investment in step-down infrastructure needs to be accelerated.
There will be much squealing, of course, but the common good has to take priority over the private property rights of individual billionaire owners and investors.
Since the private pension funds of ordinary citizens have been dipped into by the State to pay for socialised bank debt, the private property taboo has been well and truly broken. It’s just a matter of focus and scale – and impudence.
The Mater private and St Vincent’s private are beautifully positioned on the sites of two major public hospitals that are experiencing overcrowding. They would be a very good place to start. – Yours, etc,
Dr GERRY BURKE,
Department of
Obstetrics and Gynaecology,
Graduate Entry
Medical School,
University of Limerick.
Sir, – Can I take it that the people of Ireland are going to sit back and watch underpaid and overworked nurses bear the burden of protesting against the scandalous situation in our hospitals? Are people who found their revolutionary fervour quickly enough when their pockets were being hit by water charges indifferent to the suffering and, I have no doubt, deaths that will occur until this situation is rectified?
If ever there was a time for the barricades to be built has it not arrived? If we sit quietly under this scandal then we should not dare to commemorate those who went out nearly 100 years ago to build an Ireland that “cherished all the children of the nation equally”. – Yours, etc,
MÁIRÍN de BURCA,
Dublin 3.
Sir, – It is shocking and unacceptable that in this day and age, elderly patients are kept waiting in chairs in A&E wards for lengths of time that are equivalent to multiple working days.
The fear, anguish and lack of dignity afforded to those who have given much to this country can only be imagined. That nursing staff stoically carry out their duties under such difficult and stressful working conditions is a credit to them. But this is not a problem that crept up on us. It was foreseen that with an ageing population and a lack of community care that this situation was inevitable.
As usual, we end up trying to solve problems rather than prevent them. – Yours, etc,
JOHN BELLEW,
Dunleer,
Co Louth.
Sir, – Older people in hospitals are often inappropriately the exclusive focus of the bed crises . While not majority occupants, younger trauma patients, for example, or younger chronic disease patients in need of rehabilitation, are rarely the focus of emergency discharge initiatives, even though they are less likely to have the complex co-morbidities or the predispisition to acute crises requiring the technology and interdisciplinary expertise of an acute hospital. Similarly many of our acute assessment initiatives favour fitter and younger patients to the exclusion of frail older people left on trollies to await an admission into the main hospital.
Perhaps when discussing our hospital bed crises we might start with those who most need to be there and who are least likely to need an acute hospital bed on admission and discharge. – Yours, etc,
RONAN COLLINS, MD
Consultant Physician
in Geriatric Medicine,
Rathgar,
Dublin 14.
Sir, – Merely increasing beds and staff in hospitals will be costly and may not resolve the problem in the long term. The real question to explore is how many patients in hospital are delayed discharges and how can they be supported at home or moved to nursing home care in a timely manner.
While families and community-based services need to work proactively with hospitals in the discharge plans for all those who for a variety of reasons can not return home, prioritising available funding to primary care teams with a requirement to case-manage the most vulnerable in our community, both to prevent hospital admissions and effect timely discharges, may be the key response. – Yours, etc,
FRANK BROWNE,
Templeogue,
Dublin 16.
Sir, – Once again the annual outcry about people waiting on hospital trollies erupts and it’s all put down to funding problems and austerity.
We continue to ignore the fact that every single night 2,000 of our total 11,000 hospital beds are occupied by people with alcohol-related illness.
If our political and health leaders prioritised the public health issues of reducing our alcohol-soaked culture and provided effective alcohol treatment services, people would not have to wait on trollies. – Yours, etc,
CAROL MOORE,
Dublin 6W.
Sir, – Having worked in our hospitals for a number of years, and having also worked abroad, I have no doubt that this annual “winter surge” is primarily due to a lack of spare capacity within the hospital system.
However, it is worth pointing out that this annual problem follows the Christmas holiday period; a period of two weeks, during which our hospitals are run on a skeleton staff. I have attempted to contact staff in different hospital departments over the last few weeks, only to be told the department was either closed or staff were on holidays.
We all want a modern healthcare system. We cannot expect to run effectively our hospitals on a skeleton service for two weeks each December and not expect repercussions each January. – Yours, etc,
Dr IAN Mag FHEARRAIGH,
Dublin 7.