A round-up of today's other health news in brief
Healthy foetus aborted by mistake
AN AUSTRALIAN hospital is investigating an incident in which staff aborted a healthy twin foetus by mistake. The woman was 32 weeks pregnant when she decided to abort one of her twin boys, because of a congenital heart defect, at Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital. After the error emerged, the mother then underwent an emergency Caesarean section and a termination for the other foetus. In a statement, the hospital confirmed that a “distressing clinical accident occurred”, describing it as a terrible tragedy.
HSE West improves rates of staff absenteeism
A SENIOR HSE official has stated that the HSE West is starting to see significant improvements in some services within certain areas in its battle against absenteeism.
Daniel McCallion was speaking ahead of the issuing of a report by the Task Force on absenteeism in the HSE West area after the HSE confirmed in September that there were 1,100 staff calling in sick every day from Donegal to Limerick.
The HSE West’s assistant national director for finance, Liam Minihan, confirmed that this absenteeism was costing the HSE €5 million per month.
Mr McCallion conceded that the improvement had been small in overall terms. However, he said: “This is something that demands constant management attention and it will continue to get that over the coming months to bring the attendance levels back into line with targets.”
Chairman of the HSE West area, Cllr Padraig Conneely (FG), said: “The improvement is encouraging. The figures published in September were alarming and all of the calls of people phoning in sick each day can’t be genuine.
“The HSE needs to be more aggressive and rigorous in addressing the absenteeism. It is a very critical time for the HSE and the executive has to take more steps to address the absenteeism,” he said.
A spokesman for Minister for Health James Reilly, said yesterday: The Minister looks forward to the analysis by the HSE West of the absenteeism, while supporting continued focused action to address the absenteeism.”
GPs and nurses need more support for palliative care
GPS NEED AN established way to communicate with those providing specialist palliative care (SPC) services out of hours, a new report has stated. Community-based doctors and nurses are frequently the ones who provide palliative care services for dying patients in a home setting.
The need for community-based health professionals to have more access to information is the main recommendation of the Primary Palliative Care (PPC) programme, which has been operating as a partnership between the Irish Hospice Foundation, the Irish College of General Practitioners and the HSE for the past year.
It was set up to examine how community-based health professionals can best deal with patients who need palliative care services. It undertook a series of consultation meetings across 10 local HSE health offices.
The themes addressed referred to communication with patients and families; co-ordination of services and transfer of information; education and training needs; and access to medication and equipment.
The report noted that a Department of Health and Children report recommended that SPC nurses should act as a resource to community-based health professionals and that a 24-hour telephone advisory service should be available to support the provision of palliative care in all settings.
Among the recommendations made by GPs and nurses is that there needs to be clarity on the advice and information available from specialist palliative care services out of hours.
