The urgent work of reforming the health services will proceed very slowly indeed, judging by the fate of the recommendations of the Medical Manpower Forum.
Readers will recall that the forum's report envisaged many more consultants in our hospitals, working morning, noon and night, with outpatient clinics before and after normal working hours.
When the Government considered the report last April, it said it would consider the proposals again after it received a report on costs to implement them. This, it said, would be undertaken "by the newly established National Task Force on Medical Manpower".
But it emerged in the Dβil last week that, six months later, the task force has not been set up. The information was given by the Minister for Health and Children to Mr Bernard Allen who had asked "the reason for the long delay in implementing the recommendations of the Manpower Report Forum".
In his reply, Mr Martin said his officials and the independent chairman of the task force, Mr David Hanly, had been doing the preparatory work for it during the summer months "and I intend to proceed with the establishment of the task force and the holding of its inaugural meeting shortly".
Newcastle Hospital in Wicklow - one of the country's more progressive psychiatric hospitals - has opened a "sensory garden" for patients. The plants in the garden were chosen for their high fragrance and pleasure to touch, and also to encourage birds and butterflies. The East Coast Area Health Board said: "It has been proven through research that by stimulating the senses, hearing, smell, touch, patients with agitation and behavioural problems become somewhat calmer and easier to manage on a day-to-day basis."
Anyone being treated in a private hospital might do well to ask the consultant if he or she is covered against negligence claims. The Minister for Health told Mr John Perry TD last week that while consultants are required to be indemnified for their public work, "doctors in private practice are independent contractors and it is a matter for themselves, or for the hospitals in which they practice, as to how they finance the cost of any successful claims made against them".
Mr Martin said: "The issue of requiring doctors to produce evidence of holding satisfactory indemnity cover is being considered in the context of a new medical practitioners Act."
If you are coping with arthritis, either as a patient or as a doctor, the Arthritis Resource Pages of the Mater Hospital's website (www.mater.ie) could help. Visitors who click into it from the Mater's home page can get, from the menu on the left, lots of information on arthritis, drugs, the Department of Rheumatology in the Mater and even the names and addresses of rheumatologists elsewhere in the country.
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