Scairbh
Na
gCaorach
EMYVALE
Is Drogheda Next For The Chop?
IN March, April, May and June of 2002 the then NEHB was warned by the Medical Board
in Monaghan General Hospital that the College of Anaesthesia was going to remove
training recognition from Monaghan and that there would be great difficulty getting
Junior Doctors in Anaesthesia for the new term starting on July 1st. The NEHB did
nothing practical to solve the problem other than complain about the reasons why
this might be. Then on July 1st there were no Junior doctors to take over and we
were left with one consultant to hold the fort 24/7, which was an impossible task
and very unsafe. He notified the NEHB that he could not accept responsibility for
what might go wrong and instead of getting help they just took Monaghan ‘Off Call’
and put a stop on surgery.
There has always been inferences by the authorities that surgery was unsafe in Monaghan and yet Monaghan General Hospital was regarded as one of the best training hospitals in Ireland and received accolades for its work. Indeed some Registrars completed their Fellowship process for the Royal College of Surgeons very successfully in Monaghan. Our photo shows one such Fellow being congratulated by his Tutor, Mr Paul McAleese and Dr Anjum in 2005. In the background is the Royal College plaque recognising Monaghan as a Surgical training Unit - something which was never refuted, recalled or suspended. The Plaque was just taken off the wall and disappeared.
Getting back to the present - The exact same situation is now unfolding in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and the Medical Staff there has warned the HSE that there will be no Junior Doctors in Anaesthesia for the new term beginning on January 1st and that services like A & E, emergency and elective surgery, maternity and Gynaecology will be curtailed as a result. Has the HSE taken any practical steps to avoid the loss of services - you’ve guessed it. Here is what a HSE manager says as reported in the Irish Tomes: ‘Andrew Condon, general manager of the HSE’s office of the national director of human resources, claimed the staff to fill junior doctor vacancies did not exist and said difficult decisions regarding service reconfiguration would have to be made’. So is Drogheda next for the chop? Is this the HSE using the same process as in Monaghan to downgrade services in Drogheda? You might say - ‘they could not do that’ - wrong - it is in the plan that the big hospitals of Dublin, namely Beaumont, Mater, and Connolly will serve the North East. That is one of the reasons that they called this region - HSE Dublin North East. Now if the Metro North gets going and we return to profit in this country then another Regional Hospital will be built around Swords which will then have a railway station to help get patients from Dublin there but we in rural Ireland can depend on a speeding ambulance and prayer.