Madam, - We write to express our frustration at a bizarre situation related to the current HSE "freeze" on health service recruitment. In the epilepsy programme at Beaumont Hospital, we have independent funding from the Health Research Board (HRB) to undertake a programme of research and development to enhance care in Ireland.
However, we have been informed by hospital management, which has in turn been informed by the HSE, that the current recruitment ban also applies to research personnel, even though funding will not be coming from HSE coffers.
The health research and development function of the HRB and the wider health service is about continuously advancing knowledge and seeking improved ways of providing healthcare. It is therefore an essential part of our duty of care to patients and their families.
The Department of Health and Children funds the HRB, which aims, inter alia, to promote the conduct of research close to the delivery of patient care. Meanwhile the HSE prevents this by imposing restrictions on recruitment of research personnel.
We would like to have made representations about this to the
HSE, but unfortunately there is no mechanism which enables senior
clinicians or researchers to communicate directly with responsible
members of the HSE. We feel it is our duty publicly to expose this
anomaly whereby various organs of the State appear to be at
loggerheads with each another to the detriment of patient care and
clinical research and development. We are also writing in a
personal capacity. - Yours, etc,
Dr NORMAN DELANTY,
Consultant Neurologist,
and Director,
Epilepsy Programme;
Mrs MARY FITZSIMONS,
Neurophysicist,
and Director of Epilepsy R&D,
Beaumont Hospital,
Dublin 9.
Madam, - Last April the HSE's answer to the critical shortage of posts for newly qualified physiotherapists was to create a national panel. This involved interviewing more than 400 physiotherapists from all over the country in Dublin.
Administration costs were, no doubt, enormous. With each available post, more administration costs were incurred as those in the panel were contacted. As a physiotherapist, I myself was contacted more than 15 times regarding various posts from West Cork to Donegal between May and August.
Is it any surprise that the HSE then realised it had overspent its budget and couldn't actually proceed to employ any of the physiotherapists who now wait on this panel?
To add insult to injury, while I wait for the embargo to be lifted so I can begin work in a post which I have accepted, HSE hob-nobs, who have no contact with patients, receive bonuses for all their hard administrative work. Some of these bonuses amounted to more than the annual salaries for two allied health professionals.
As for our Minister for Health, shouldn't we make her Minister
for Administration? - Yours, etc,
NICOLA THOMPSON,
Skerries,
Co Dublin.