Heart Beat/Maurice Neligan: The woes of the health service won't disappear any time soon. This fine weather unfortunately will. I had intended to follow up on the barely concealed plan of the Minister for Trolleys to privatise the health service, but that can wait.
It is too nice a day to bring vexation on myself and then share it with you. Let us all pretend that all is well with the world and that we dwell in the felicitous society described in Macauley's Lays of Ancient Rome:
Then none were for a party
Then all were for the state
Then the great men helped the poor
And the poor man loved the great.
I suppose that would be deemed now as patronising and politically incorrect. They were lucky then that they had no Gauleiter of purported equality.
Enough gloom; our resident and most territorial robin, joined me in the kitchen twice today, but stopped just short of feeding from my hand. He is astonishingly fearless and on occasion follows me around the garden. I get an uneasy feeling about re-incarnation and wonder should I know him. I hope he is not an ex-patient who may have discovered in the afterlife that he would have been fine for some additional years if he had not fallen into my clutches.
He was not my only avian visitor today. A heron flew low over the garden and did his angel of death bit in the pond. This visitation is such a regular event that we finally gave up on restocking with fish. On this occasion the "silent watcher of the marshes" found little to his liking and departed quickly. Rather like a consultant doing his rounds, I thought. I speculated idly as to whether my little pond would be classified as public or private. I suppose as in medicine, that would depend on the richness of the pickings.
In my peripatetic wandering through my career, I had described briefly my sojourn as resident medical officer in the Bon Secours in Glasnevin. It was a happy experience for me; I learned a lot, much from consultants I had not met before. It was a friendly, quietly efficient hospital and I retain warm memories of its staff.
I noted the waste not, want not philosophy of our theatre sister. There was little that was disposable, drapes were stitched and restitched and, as true as I am sitting here, a variety of invisible mending was employed on torn surgical gloves. There was little surgical infection, and such as there was, easily treated with antibiotics. There was no MRSA. Now forests are felled to provide paper disposable gowns and drapes and we have infection and MRSA. If I was an epidemiologist I would conclude that paper gowns cause these infections, but as a surgeon I have to admit that I am not that clever.
Time passed pleasantly, but there was an exam cloud on the horizon. It approached swiftly enough but never had the thunderous threatening feel of the final med exams. Nonetheless, it had to be faced as it was the gateway for those who wished to pursue a surgical career. It basically consisted of anatomy, physiology and pathology, all at a more advanced level than the undergraduate course. I remember that my two study colleagues both passed their exams on a Friday and that I had to wait until the following Tuesday for my appearance before the examiners. The weekend passed with desultory study and ill concealed envy of my carousing companions.
Then it was all over. Another milestone passed and I could now realistically begin to contemplate a surgical career. Firstly, I had to get a surgical job and find out whether I would make a surgeon, or in the vernacular, could I cut? I was promised the next surgical registrar job in my old teaching hospital, the Mater, due to become vacant in three months. This hiatus was filled by doing locums for GPs which gave me some insight into how incredibly hard these men and women worked.
Lastly, a small concern. The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Neill, voiced his concerns as to the state of Tallaght Hospital. He felt that services were being eroded and that promised beds had never materialised. His concerns would strike a chord with hospital management groups throughout the State. It is well when a man of such integrity and standing steps forward on behalf of the patients. I am not sure, however, that religious ethos should stand in the way of developing a new state-of-the-art hospital for all the children of the nation, regardless of creed, colour or circumstances.
The Master said: "Suffer the little children to come unto Me and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." Let us gather them together to care for them all. Let us do this irrespective of any perceived differences. I am sure He would see none.
- Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon.