Sir, – Last week I received a letter from a consultant in a university teaching hospital in Dublin requesting me to refer a public patient who has a tumour, which may be malignant, to another hospital because he had no operating time to do this procedure, and that his colleagues within the same unit had such long waiting lists that they too could not take on his care either.
I, as the GP, now have to search for another public hospital that has the capacity to remove this potential cancer.
Maybe I’ll get a similar letter in a week or two from another public hospital.
The health service has now reached a point I never imagined I would ever see.
I pity the poor patient depending on such a public service. – Yours, etc,
Dr SEAMUS CLARKE,
Clones,
Co Monaghan.