Health Service not as sickly as we are told

Brendan Burgess

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A great article by Sarah Carey in today's [broken link removed].

Her child was injured and got great treatment in the A&E of a public hospital in Ireland!
 
Good article. I think she's right... we all need to start emphasising the positives at the moment.
 
Well, as someone who has had to make frequent visits ot A&E with an ill and elderly parent, Sarah Carey's experience has not been mine. Obviously Temple St is not going to be innundated with unconcious drunks and drug addicts and elderly people who tend to form a large part of admissions to A&E Departments. My own experience has been long, long waits with no doctors available, terrified that your parent will have another stroke or seizure while waiting. Patients are left lying on trolleys out on corridors with absolutely no privacy or dignity. The smell of urine is overwhelming and sometimes you are told that they have run out of pillows and don't have enough to go around for all the patients. I have, at times. had to drive home to make a sandwich for my mother to eat in the filthy urine smelling corridor while looking after my father, because she is terrified if she leaves for five minutes the elusive doctor will arrive and she won't be there. Seriously, it is soul destroying. I'm glad Sarah Carey had a positive experience but would be very concerned if people thought this was typical and all the concerns highlighted are exaggerations. I promise you, they are not.
 
My limited experience with my local A&E (late at night, unusual circumstances) has been blighted only really with time wasting free loaders on medical cards. That might sound bad but it's the truth. They are the bane of the staff there. Things like "my knee feels funny" or "I just don't feel right".

Staff have confirmed to me that this is a depressingly regular occurence and that they see the same faces all the time.

The staff themselves have been very good IME.
 
For the first time, since becoming a parent in 2000, we had to go to Temple Street last year. I was pleasantly surprised with how efficient it all was. Even though there seemed to be a lot of kids and families waiting to be seen, my son was seen, assessed and released all within 30 minutes (we had been to the GP first).

The bag of books and DS consoles were not needed !
 

A tenner a visit, paid at the door would sort that out
 
I agree with Sarah Carey in relation to Temple Street. I have experience there and it has always being positive. In relation to other A & E departments I cannot say the same. Terrible dumps, endless waits, no information, drunks and their mates creating chaos, ditto addicts and their mates. People lying on trolleys for hours and in some cases days. Filthy toilets, no facilities for washing and always a sense of menace. Maybe Sarah should go to Beaumont or the Mater Hospital on an average night if she wants third world conditions.
 
My Dad was admitted to hosp last year after a 20 hour wait in A&E. He was on a trolley which was a large mobile bed and he told us he was comfortable. Now it was UCHG and he was on a corridor which was slightly off the main A and E area. While he was waiting for his bed to be ready - the doctors under the consultant he was admitted under came to check up on him every couple of hours.

So overall we were happy with the care he got while he was waiting for a bed.
 
My experience of the Childrens A&E in Tallaght hospital has always been positive.

I agree with Caveat about general A&E's.
 
I've been in A&E a few times with my elderly parents. In fairness to the staff, I thin they do their best in difficult circumstances. However, I could never understand why Gardai are not assigned to be on duty there of a night.

One thing I have learnt however, is never ever leave someone on their own on a trolley in A&E. Stay with them, be constantly asking doctors/nurses when is he going to get a bed etc? I'm not saying be rude or anything like it, but me experience is that your relative will get moved to a ward quicker, just to get you out of the way
 
I think the article and the thread title are very misleading. One person's experience in the capital city at a specialist children's hospital cannot and should not translate into a positive health-check on the health service as a whole. You cannot make general statements about the quality of service available to a population of 4M+ at dozens of A&E facilities based on a single interaction.

It is poor journalism, and Ms. Carey's very limited capability and credibility as a public medicine commentator has suffered in my eyes as a consequence, and based on her ham-fisted attempts to discredit some compilers of statistics, I question her objectivity.

While I'm delighted to hear her son got speedy and professional help to ease his suffering over the holiday, I'm disappointed to see her gratitude cloud her professional objectivity and result in poor journalism and glowing support for HSE propaganda.
 
Agreed mathepac. I think she made some valid points (the amount of negativity around HSE) but to try and equate her experience and those of a few others to anything more than that is poor journalism at best. But certainly not surprised that Ms Carey falls into the category of poor journalist. She's just another in a line of those purporting to be journalists but are really just opinion pushers with very little actual journalism skill. A certain Mr O'Doherty would spring to mind as being in that bracket. Glorified letter writers imho.
 


Very well said. I too was concerned about the misleading tone of this article. I would really like to see an article written by a journalist who has had to take an elderly relative to the A&E in Tallaght or some other General Hospital, with violent drunks being brought in accompanied by Guards and shouting and roaring their heads off, while elderly people are examined on trollies in full view of anyone who happens to be standing or sitting around and relatives are begging harrassed and overworked nurses to find out when a bed will be available.
 
My experiences with A&E in Tallaght hospital reflect yours Liaconn.
I have experienced horrors there with my family and/or in laws. My mothers wheelchair was stolen from her by a junkie while she lay on a trolley in a crowded hallway, my father in law was left terrified on a trolley in corridor with a dislocated hip for hours while junkies and drunks ran amok around him, I personally witnessed a drunk punch a nurse in the face while she was trying to stitch his face back up after a fight, an uncle had a heart attack, was left on a trolley with no blankets or pillow, for 3 days.

Its truly horrendous.
 

That’s terrible. My experience when a very elderly grandparent was brought there a few years back was much better. Your experience, especially your uncle being left with no blanket or pillow for three days, sounds like plain incompetence and indifference by the medical and nursing staff. I don’t think anyone could seriously say that’s down to lack of resources, the HSE or Mary Harney.
 
Purple

My father, who had just had a stroke, was left with no pillow and when we asked we were told that they had 'run out', so it is down to lack of resources. The medical staff are nearly always brilliant and I really don't think that kind of thing is their fault. It is penny pinching while loads of public money is being wasted on layers and layers of bureaucracy.

On a separate but related note, a friend of mine had to attend Vincent's A&E with an injured parent one night recently and was there for hours and hours. When she remarked to the doctor, when he eventually was available, that she would love if our Ministers could see this, he told her that a very high profile and prominent Minister (whom he named) had been in recently and had skipped the queue.
 
My wife is a doctor; she worked in hospitals for years. Many of her friends are doctors and still work in hospitals. The idea that a hospital doesn’t have enough money to buy pillows is ridiculous. If they don’t have enough it’s due to gross incompetence and waste by management and staff.

Until we get over the notion that those who work in the health service, be they so-called “front line” or not, bear no responsibility for the problems of that health service we will never fix it. I’m not saying they are the only cause, but they are in the mix.
 

I'm sure they were in more urgent need of medical attention (since medical staff are not to blame for any of the problems and are not subject to the same human failings as the rest of us they couldn’t possible have done it for any other reason).
 
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