Sign up now for ease of access to The Medical Independent, Ireland’s most frequently published medical newspaper, delivering award-winning news and investigative reporting.
Established in 2010, along with its sister publication The Medical Independent, our stated aim is to investigate and analyse the major issues affecting healthcare and the medical profession in Ireland. The Medical Independent has won a number of awards for its investigative journalism, and its stories are frequently picked up by national digital, broadcast and print media. The Medical Independent is published by GreenCross Publishing.
Address: Top Floor, 111 Rathmines Road Lr, Dublin 6
Tel: 353 (01) 441 0024
GreenCross Publishing is owned by Graham Cooke.
17th National Health Summit, virtual conference, 10 February 2021
The accumulation of non-Covid-19 cases within the health system is a “very significant problem”, the annual National Health Summit heard earlier this month.
“During the month of January our largest cancer centre for the whole of the west and north west of Ireland, serving a population of 800,000 people, essentially did no cancer surgery for a full month,” said Mr Tony Canavan, CEO, Saolta University Health Care Group.
“That is unsustainable and there are problems associated with that, problems sitting with patients in the community that need to be addressed.”
He said that non-Covid cases are “a very significant problem that is being stored up”.
Prof Mary Horgan, President of the RCPI, told the conference that what keeps her “awake at night is what we are missing”, because of patient fear of presenting to hospital or community services.
“I think it’s important that we get our non-Covid service, which is the dominant part of our services, up and running again.
“I think it is challenging, I think we need to shift from a very immediate focus that our whole system is just Covid. That is not the case.”
Prof Horgan said that “every single new technology that is out there that can manage and assist” in the current crisis should be embraced.
“That is vaccination, that is testing and tracing using every test system, not just PCR but other rapid testing, continuing the [social distancing, handwashing, etc] behaviours that got us where we are today after the difficult month [of high cases in January], and the new treatments that are on the horizon.”
Reflecting on what changes could occur in hospitals after the pandemic, Prof Horgan highlighted the example of hospital doctors going into community care settings.
“Particularly in care for the elderly, which effectively happened and protected people where they live, essentially in long-term residential facilities. We do that in paediatrics already.”
On paediatrics, she said that “we have seen a huge decrease in the number of children attending services because of the simple measures we are doing such as hand hygiene, cough etiquette… so I think we need to take lessons from that”.
New GPs should be prepared for the practicalities and business aspects of running a practice, according...
There was almost a three-fold increase in the number of new post applications made to the.
The ICGP is examining alternative pathways for entry into general practice training as part of efforts...
In December, the HSE released part of an external review into the case of 'Brandon', a...
The evidence on doctor burnout “should scare us and concern us”, the Director of the RCSI...
A review of public health governance structures and addressing “longstanding” IT infrastructure...
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.