Madam, – Prof Brendan Drumm (“HSE will not let vested interests stop us from attaining our goal”, Opinion, August 12th) refers to “GPs, nurses and other allied health professionals . . . leading a quiet revolution in the provision of community-based care through primary care teams”. I am afraid that he is beginning to believe his own propaganda. If there is such a quiet revolution, its low volume is most likely due to the exasperation of the participants, the number of unfilled posts in the teams and the lack of acclaim from the service recipients.
Prof Drumm would like us to believe that packs of health professionals are covering the countryside ensuring the wellbeing of the public. I’m not sure what half a physiotherapist looks like, or a third of a speech therapist for that matter, but these fractions of allied health professionals are the reality for most primary care teams. And when the half a physiotherapist takes his or her holidays or is on maternity leave, vacancies are not filled because of a recruitment embargo.
In addition, teams are confused about whom to look after. The initial proposal was that each team would be formed around the patients in existing GP practices, given that nearly everyone has a GP, but this was not what happened and many of the teams are organised geographically, resulting in some patients having a GP that belongs to one primary care team and a third of a speech therapist that belongs to another.
The idea of primary care teams is a fine one: service providers linking up to discuss patient problems in a formal, or often informal way with a view to improving patient care and achieving real outcomes is something that we would surely all love to see.
I’m sorry to say, however, that in the eyes of this particular revolutionary, Prof Drumm and Minister for Health Mary Harney’s watered down version is not good enough. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The patients, the people with a real vested interest in the health service, are not stopping anyone from reaching their objective.
Who in the HSE’s transformation programme decided that the Mid-Western Regional Hospital Limerick, would not have a speech therapist to evaluate a stroke patient’s ability to eat or swallow?
Is this the improvement the vested interests should not criticise? My wife waited three days to be assessed and allowed home because a speech therapist was not available. I hope Prof Drumm would not think that this is a sign of significant progress. Larger hospitals are just not being developed to provide complex care.
The quiet revolution in community health Prof Drumm speaks about is a shambles when there are some 50 people in the Shannon catchment area alone waiting for rubber cushions to sit on to prevent bed sores.
I have the highest regard and greatest respect and am deeply grateful for the commitment and care provided by Prof Lyons and his team to the stroke victims, especially my wife, in the mid west. The nursing care provided to my wife over a nine-year period, before her death, at both the Regional Hospital and St Camillus’s Hospital ennobled the nursing profession. – Yours, etc,