A chara, - In an effort to turn around a 2 per cent mid-year budget shortfall, the management at Sligo General Hospital has been directed by the HSE to introduce swingeing cuts. Despite Prof Brendan Drumm's assurance that these measures will not affect patient care, I assure you they will.
Upwards of 30 agency nurses (recent graduates of our own school of nursing for the most part) are to be let go. Household and administrate staff will also be affected.
Four consultants currently providing service on temporary contracts will also leave. They comprise an orthopaedic surgeon, an obstetrician/gynaecologist, a general surgeon with special interest in breast surgery and an ENT surgeon.
One colleague commented that this would decimate this service. How naïve. Decimation, at 10 per cent, would be positively benign compared with the 25 per cent reduction in overall service proposed (33 per cent for ENT). The cut in breast surgery amounts to 50 per cent.
Under the terms of the proposed new consultant contract it is stated that where one makes a public comment or statement one should:
(i) "Make it clear that one is speaking in a personal capacity". I do so; yet I cannot escape the fact that I am a doctor, a surgeon, the speciality co-ordinator for ENT Surgery, the chairman of the hospital medical board of Sligo General Hospital and a member of the IHCA contract negotiating team and that I have been directed by the hospital medical board of Sligo General to make this communication.
(ii) "Never cause unnecessary public concern or patient distress". It is not my intention to cause unnecessary public concern and it would be anathema to me to deliberately cause patient distress. My intention is to raise necessary public concern.
(iii) "Not raise unrealistic expectations". I would be reluctant to raise even realistic public expectations in the current climate.
(iv) "Have regard to the impact that his comments may have on the reputation of the hospital for which he works and the morale of staff working there". I have the highest regard for the reputation of Sligo General Hospital and the morale of its staff and it is neither I, my consultant colleagues, hospital staff nor indeed our own hospital management who have led us to this sorry state.
The HSE stands indicted. The hospital and its staff stand ready and willing to serve. The patients stand waiting.
- Is mise,
NIALL F CONSIDINE, FRCSI, Consultant ENT Surgeon, Sligo General Hospital.