13th April 2004
Recently a friend of mine, who has retired after working for over forty years in the health service, was taken ill during a performance at the Point Depot. She was brought to the Mater Hospital by ambulance and was deemed ill enough to require admission having been examined in the Accident and Emergency Department there.
As we all know nowadays this involves a wait on a trolley and she languished on one for two days before she got a bed. She was very well treated in the Mater and has made a full recovery, thank goodness.
Any of us involved with any type of hospital in Ireland realises that in general the bed occupancy in hospitals here is about 105%, patients leaping into beds which are so recently vacated that they are still warm.
Much has been written and spoken about the proposed changes at Peamount Hospital. Only 60 of the beds in the Hospital are now occupied by the Chest Hospital and the great work carried out in the other parts of the former sanatorium have been overlooked. Thanks to the improvements over the last decades in the treatment of T.B. as the wards in Peamount emptied the Board made good use of them to treat other patients.
The unit for the Intellectually Disabled is one of the best I have ever visited. It was set up in the sixties to get patients with mental handicap out of our ancient mental hospitals where they had been "dumped" by society. The patients were encouraged to be as active and independent as possible. The industries section was planned to make the best use of their skills. A proposed new unit will allow for better facilities for these patients who are now older and for day patients to be catered for as well.
The Rinskey Unit, a day care unit opened last year to cater for elderly people in the district is such a success the Board of the Hospital realised that a unit for the Intellectually Disabled on a day basis would be a great boon to such people and their carers as well.
The wards for long term care of the elderly have been praised frequently by the Tanaiste, Mary Harney. Her dear father died in the unit and such was her gratitude to the staff there that she used compensation money she received for a libel case to build a gazebo and little garden for the patients outside the wards. She must have had her colleague Minister Michael Martin's smoking ban in mind, too!
Some years ago a unit for the Young Neurologically Disabled was set up. Many of the young patients have been seriously injured in road traffic accidents. Anyone who read the interview with Dr. Angela McNamara, consultant at the National Rehabilitation Centre at Rochestown Avenue and President of the European Board of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine of UEMS in the Irish Medical Times will have been made aware of the desperate shortage of beds to continue the rehabilitation of such seriously injured young people. A major expansion in this area is also planned at Peamount. Indeed, it is so well underway I saw advertisements for occupational therapy staff for the hospital in the press some weeks ago.
"Sin sceal eile" a book by patients in Peamount, some neurologically disabled , was produced recently. It is delightful and copies can be obtained from Mary Lee Tully at Peamount.
All the new initiatives are not due to bright ideas from the Board (of which I am a member) but due to a strategy for the hospital developed by the staff with outside assistance from Prospectus.
It is a pity so little of the positive developments at Peamount are known. The Board did not lightly decide to change the functions of the Chest Hospital. Pulmonary rehabilitation is to continue, but if acute admissions cannot continue following advice from Comhairle na Oispideal, the Department of Health, legal advice and that of an expert in Risk Management that has to be so.
The low bed occupancy of the Chest Hospital - 47% to 58% for many years meant that there were about 30 beds empty every night, about 10,000 bed nights per year, or 5,000 people on trollies for two nights like my friend.
Medicine changes. When I think now of the "gastric meals" (younger readers may apply for a description) that I used to carry out in Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital before these patients had a gastrectomy I feel quite faint! Now the same sort of people thanks to Professor Colm O'Moran and fellow researches are given tablets as out patients and do breath tests to see how they are doing.
We need to ensure that patients are not receiving just good care in our acute hospitals but also that they receive as much rehabilitation as possible to try to improve their chances of independent living. We have marvellous staff in Peamount and will recruit even more. They should make a great difference to the lives of Irish patients when they new initiatives get going.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
