PALLIATIVE CARE: Although the Western Health Board has failed to find a suitable locum consultant in palliative medicine for the Galway Hospice which has been closed to admissions for 14 months, there is renewed optimism that the unit will be reopened before the end of summer, Michelle McDonagh reports.
Galway Hospice Foundation chairman, Dr Richard Joyce, said they are exploring other avenues and are in close negotiations with the Western Health Board in an effort to resolve the impasse.
The Irish Times is aware that efforts are being made to find an alternative means to resume the service at the 12-bed in-patient unit. The hospice and the Health Board are to meet this week to discuss this alternative.
A spokesman for the Western Health Board confirmed the board had placed a further advert for the post of locum consultant in palliative care on the Careers in Health website this month. It was also working with a medical recruitment agency.
Ms Noreen Muldoon, Irish Nurses Organisation's industrial relations officer in the West of Ireland, said the continued closure of the hospice's in-patient unit at Renmore places great pressure on staff at the oncology ward at University College Hospital Galway.
"Patients who should normally be cared for in the hospice are being cared for in the oncology ward and other wards at UCHG. Whilst they are being very well cared for by the staff there, the acute setting is not the setting for patients who need palliative care," she added.
Ms Muldoon noted the hospice provided a range of holistic services to deal with the needs of terminally ill patients and their families during a very traumatic time in their lives, services that were not available in the acute setting where the nursing staff were already under pressure.
Mr Finbarr Fitzpatrick of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) pointed out that there could be no progress made on reopening the hospice in-patient unit until the new protocols - recommended by the review group set up to investigate the situation that led to the closure of the facility - had been signed off by an independent consultant in palliative care.
As far as he was aware, the WHB were pursuing a consultant working in Australia who has expressed an interest in the locum post.
However, GHB chairman Dr Richard Joyce said the protocol was very close to being signed off by two overseas consultants and it would certainly not be an impediment to the resumption of services.
Meanwhile, the director of palliative services with the WHB, Dr Dympna Waldron - who uncovered the medical errors at the Galway Hospice which led to the closure of the unit - recently represented the board at a cancer conference in Miami Beach, Florida.