A CRISIS of leadership exists within the health services, according to the newly elected president of the Irish Medical Organisation.
Dr Neil Brennan believed the crisis went to the highest level and should concern everyone.
There was a perception, he said, that the Department of Health was so overwhelmed in the past year by the blood scandal "that it had been distracted from a range of other, important are as of health service delivery
Dr Brennan, a consultant respiratory physician from Cork, questioned seriously the Department's ability to provide the necessary leadership to make proposed new management initiatives a reality.
"Can they bring all local management teams with them and really change the ingrained mindsets of the last 50 years? In my view the answer is `no', unless and until the process is consultative and inclusive. The IMO's role in this process is vital and must be appreciated as such."
A crisis management group should be created within the Department of Health, said Dr Brennan.
This would allow the day-to-day operational management "to continue making unhindered progress on the implementation of agreements and deliver on strategic targets".
He said lessons must be learned from the hepatitis C scandal and systems reorganised so that nothing similar could happen again. "However, the lessons learned also have much wider implications for the health services. We must be aware that the development and existence of guidelines and protocols will not necessarily prevent or solve any particular problem, nor be suitable to apply to every patient.
"They will only be as good as the expertise of the person drafting them and the judgment of the person applying them," he said.
Adequate resources were required to employ the best quality staff in adequate numbers and to keep them up to date and motivated, said Dr Brennan.
Clear examples of management failures at a national level, he said, include antibiotic resistant infections and the failure to deliver on the agreement for public health doctors.