A chara, - After suffering her third stroke, my aunt spent an entire weekend on a trolley in a corridor of the Mater Hospital this past summer. One does not need to watch a family member go through such an ordeal to feel a sense of outrage about the current shortage of beds in Irish hospitals.
However, the new Minister for Health, Mary Harney, does not help matters by referring to some patients as "bed-blockers," nor does The Irish Times further our understanding of the issue by employing the same demeaning term in presenting data on the "numbers of bed-blockers in main Dublin hospitals".
These so-called "blockers" through no fault of their own, find themselves in an institutional limbo due to systemic problems in the Irish healthcare system. My aunt remains in the Mater Hospital to this day, not out of choice but out of necessity. In scapegoating her and other, mostly elderly, patients, as "bed-blockers", the Minister and the media compound the injustice of their plight. - Is mise,
PETER McAULEY, Minneapolis, USA.