Madam, - Minister for Health Mary Harney recently became quite irate at the suggestion that she was going to employ "yellow-pack" consultants on her brand new consultants' contract. Indeed, she said, the public was being held to ransom by greedy consultants. What was good enough for consultants in the UK was good enough for consultants here.
By extension, what is good enough for patients in the UK is good enough for patients here. Which prompts the question: does she really know what is going on in the UK? The very contract that the Minister and her HSE henchmen want to introduce is the same one that has so emasculated and devalued consultants in the UK.
The current recommendation in the UK is that a consultant surgeon can be "trained" to a sufficient level to operate on people after 1,000 hours of training. I am one of the scores of junior doctors whom the Minister would like to doff his cap to her and take her new contract. A quick glance at my logbook of training shows that I have trained as a specialist trainee in orthopaedic surgery for approximately 21,000 hours.
The bar-stool pundits who write to your paper attacking "fat-cat" consultants and praising the minister should be aware of a few facts regarding what is in store for them. More than 20 per cent of new consultant surgeons in the UK are now suspended within their first year of practice due to incompetence. UK surgical trainees are no longer accepted into some sub-specialty training fellowships in the US due to lack of surgical skills and clinical knowledge. These are the same fellowships that Irish trainees have been doing for years to learn new techniques to bring home and make available to the Irish public.
In addition, consultants in the UK are no longer able to act as advocates for patients, highlighting shortages in resources and speaking out for those unable to speak for themselves.
The sad reality is that those who will ultimately suffer from the Minister's legacy will be the people whom the health service is supposed to protect - the sick and the vulnerable. I, like many of my colleagues, will not accept her contract of subservience to an organisation (the HSE) that is more interested in corporate image and spin than real healthcare provision.
I will enter the world of "for-profit" medicine - not by choice, but to be able to practise what I am trained to do. The skills that I have spent years developing at the expense of taxpayers will be denied to taxpayers who do not have private health insurance. Doctors with inferior training and qualifications will be brought in to treat patients in public hospitals and the sick will pay the price. This is truly ironic in the "post-Neary" era.
- Yours, etc,
TURLOUGH O'DONNELL, President, Irish Orthopaedic Trainees Association, Stillorgan Heath, Stillorgan, Co Dublin.