The hospital staffing crisis will deepen within months, the chief executive officers of the health boards have warned the Medical Council.
In correspondence released under the Freedom of Information Act, health board CEOs blame the Medical Council for difficulties in filling posts for non-consultant hospital doctors. The correspondence also shows that the Medical Council knew, at the end of last year, that new rules it introduced could create a staffing shortage.
They include a rule introduced in 1996 obliging non-EU doctors to pass an exam before getting registration to train in Irish hospitals.
At the end of May, Mr Donal O'Shea, chief executive of the Eastern Regional Health Authority, wrote to the Medical Council on behalf of his fellow CEOs. He complained that decisions taken by the council "have already had, or are likely to have, significant impact on service delivery in our hospitals. It is anticipated that there will be difficulty in filling all posts of NCHD on July 1st, 2000, and even greater difficulty on January 1st, 2001."
Some hospitals had difficulties this summer and anaesthetist services, including epidurals, are restricted in some parts of the State. However, the warning is unlikely to have come as news to the council as it stated in a letter to health boards last December that "the Medical Council is aware of the possible impact of these measures on medical manpower in Ireland".
The measures included the introduction of a clinical assessment for non-EU doctors. Each doctor wanting to sit the test, the council explained in an accompanying letter, must come to Ireland for the clinical component of the test. To take the test ,they must pay fees of about £900.
While 200 doctors a year had taken up temporary registration before the introduction of the test, only 100 sat the examination in the two years since it was introduced, the council said. Between 25 and 50 per cent passed.
Since the sharp fall-off which followed the implementation of the test, numbers are starting to increase again, but "it may be some time before a stable situation is reached", the council said.
Meanwhile, nurse shortages continue. Waiting lists at James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown, Dublin, grew by 15 per cent in the first half of the year, mainly due to nursing shortages. The National Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at St James's Hospital, Dublin, has a shortage of both trained senior staff nurses and of NCHDs, according to Prof Shaun McCann, its director.
email: hospitalwatch@irish-times.ie
weblink: Hospital Watch special on ireland.com: http:// www.ireland.com/special/hospital
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