Sir, – Having been in Beaumont hospital’s casualty department on Tuesday night, I would like to declare my respect for the staff who work there.
I’m not sure I could face telling a patient that they would have to stay in a wheelchair until a chair hopefully becomes available. I would struggle with the fact the facilities do not allow for the dignity and privacy people need when they are ill. Could I accept using a plastic chair as my work area as I hunkered down beside a patient in a wheelchair to insert a cannula while someone squeezed past to enter the toilet? I’m not sure I could. Could I cope with the heart-rending pleas from patients to be allowed to go home as they feel the conditions are a greater threat to them than the illness or injury that landed them there in the first place? I could go on.
The staff on the front line of our health services are holding things together despite the system, not because of it. I saw, first hand, better facilities in a primary hospital in a township on the edge of the Kalahari desert.
I look forward to the publication of the HSE Service Plan with trepidation. – Yours, etc,
COLIN WHITE,
Chieftains Close ,
Balbriggan, Co Dublin.