Sir, – The Minister of Health has suggested that we need to significantly increase the number of doctors and other health care workers that are trained in Ireland.
Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the Minister’s poor understanding of the problems and solutions that currently pertain in our medical service. In addition to the medical schools that have always existed we now have a number of postgraduate medical schools. However, all medical schools have a significant proportion of the students from overseas countries, in particular north America and the Middle East. As a result, we are training doctors for other countries and not for our own health service.
We have a significant shortage of nurses as a result of which we are recruiting from overseas. The Minister does not seem to realise where all the Irish-trained nurses have gone. While a significant proportion have emigrated, there are large number of public hospital trained nurses working in the expanding private hospital system. These hospitals only exist and survive as a result of the €1.5 billion that the Government has, under the auspices of the National Treatment Purchase Fund, injected into the private healthcare system. The two-tier healthcare system much hated by politicians is in fact being supported by the Government.
Sláintecare, the Government’s solution to all the problems in the health service, will not be the panacea it seems to believe. There is a perception among politicians that a vast number of private patients are being admitted to public hospitals and denying public patients access to beds and services. This is a fallacy as the majority of private patients treated in public hospitals are treated as emergencies and this will not change with the advent of Sláintecare. The only beneficiaries of this particular piece of madness will be the private insurers which will no longer give any financial support to the public health sector and the Government will have to replace this funding.
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The Government’s continued failure to resolve the turmoil our health services is not surprising as they do not understand the reasons behind the problems. – Yours, etc,
PETER O’ROURKE,
FRCS (Orth),
(Retired Consultant
Orthopaedic Surgeon),
Ramelton,
Co Donegal.