IMO Conference: Surgeons and anaesthetists regularly arrive to work in the Republic's public hospitals to find there is no work for them, the newly-elected president of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has said.
Dr Asam Ishtiaq told doctors at the organisation's annual meeting that a lack of beds caused by the crisis in hospital A&E departments meant that patients were suffering, and the skills and training of doctors were adversely affected.
In his presidential address he criticised the use of the National Treatment Purchase Fund to tackle waiting-list problems.
"Instead of making long-term investment to create more capacity in the public hospitals sector, a quick-fix solution to win votes was chosen."
Referring to the need to treat patients who required planned, non-emergency care, he said: "There is evidence to suggest that when these elective admissions cannot be made in a timely fashion such patients present at accident and emergency departments with an exacerbation of their clinical problems. This also contributes to dangerous levels of overcrowding in A&E departments."
Dr Ishtiaq said it was unprecedented that consultants were "forced to opt" for industrial action over insurance cover.
"One year after the State (clinical indemnity) scheme was introduced we find ourselves in the appalling situation whereby 30 consultants have been left without indemnity cover, and some are being sued by their own employers."
In the area of health service reform, he said doctors had been sidelined with no professional representative roles within the new Health Service Executive and by "gagging clauses" in the 2004 Health Act.
Mr Hugh Bredin, consultant urologist at University College Hospital Galway and a past president of the IMO, said the Government had "driven a coach and four" through the consultant common contract. "It does not auger well for the future of consultants in this country."
Delivering a paper at a seminar on "21st Century Doctors: Where Will They Come From", Dr Kate Adams, a recently-qualified graduate entrant to medicine in Britain with a background in management and economics, said there were now 14 graduate entry medical training programmes offering 783 places in the UK.
While it was too early to assess whether the new graduate entry programmes were helping to tackle the manpower crisis in general practice, Dr Adams said the new schemes were likely to offer a partial solution.
She was in favour of graduate entrants to medicine having a background in the arts as well as science, adding that research had shown those with a background in the humanities become doctors "with better clinical skills".
Dr Mick Molloy, the chairman of the IMO's non-consultant hospital doctor (NCHD) committee, outlined the organisation's submission to the Higher Education Authority on the future of medical training here. He said the IMO had recommended an overall increase in the number of medical school places, and a removal of a cap on the number of Irish and EU entrants.
He questioned whether a graduate entry system would merely move the points race at Leaving Cert level to a separate hurdle for those attempting to achieve high grades in their undergraduate examinations.
Rejecting the argument that mature students are in a better position to give a commitment to a career as a doctor, he said: "Does that mean that 18-year-old medical students are less mature that those choosing economics or science degrees?"