Irish emergency departments are stretched to the limit.
The above statement is no surprise to anyone who lives there. Sick people languish on trolleys for days at a time in crowded hospitals all over the country. The health ministry is the poisoned chalice of Irish politics. We've had the same health minister in place for many years, who has succeeded only in pissing off the staff, and improving some select health indices, while ignoring anything that doesn't fit into a succinct soundbite.
Recently, our esteemed minister has realised how spectacularly unsuccessful her tenure has been.....so she tried her hand at deliberately misleading the public. Mary Harney told us that things are grannnnnd, as overcrowding in A+E departments has vastly improved, and that it's confined to a few repeat offender hospitals.
BOLLOCKS!!!!!!
I'm currently working in Australia, where we're fed less nonsense. BUT......we have less need to spin the issues over here. We have well staffed emergency departments, where the staff aren't exhausted, and there's senior support easily available. Australian politicians are as disingenuous as their Irish counterparts, if not more. However, they have no need to explain to the population why their elderly relatives are left to fester on uncomfortable corridor trolleys in overcrowded departments. That's because it doesn't happen.
Back in Ireland, however, there are 3 options available to our political elite:
1) Try a quick fix, in the hope of picking up votes in time for the next election.
2) Do something about it. It might take time, it might take money, and it might not win immediate votes. But by looking at health as a problem that will need a consistent approach over time, it will reap benefits for the population.
3) Lie about it. "Problem? What problem?" Ooohhh look.......a penguin!".
Option 1 has been tried. As anyone with a rudimetary grasp of health would have guessed, it didn't work.
Option 2 is, well, we all know that's never been a viable political strategy for politicians who have to get re-elected every few years.
So, option 3 has been tried. Minister Harney seems to have been chilling in her office one random wintry day, just after we'd reached a national record of having 500 patients in A+E departments around the country who needed a bed, but were instead accommodated on trolleys.
"How can I put a spin on this disaster?". "Is there any way I can get a few votes out of this?".
So, she calls in her PR people: "OK guys. I want you to get in touch with all the broadsheets, and tell them that overcrowding is improving. Tell them it's only a problem in a few hospitals. And tell them it doesn't really matter if the elderly lie on hard trolleys for days, as long as they're being treated. And tell the tabloids that a monkey has been seen on the grounds of Beaumont Hospital. That'll distract them from the issue".
"Em, excuse me, minister...." a young upstart in her media division may have said, as his more experienced peers shook their heads in despair...."...But last week we saw more people than ever waiting on trolleys in emergency departments, and hospitals that didn't have overcrowding problems in the past are now struggling to find beds. Oh, and there are studies showing that people are more likely to die or deteriorate if they are left on trolleys i overcrowded departments".
"Well, duhhhhhhhhhhhhh. But do you think that would win me any votes?????".
Obviously, that conversation is a figment of my imagination. But it beggars belief how one politician can spout so much nonsense, unchecked by her department.
It's a given that politicians in Ireland are not the people we look to for guidance during tough times. We simply hope that we can survive, despite their interference. I had hoped that we could turn to our professional bodies at times like this. I had hoped they would lobby the health department, and to try and push the minister in the right direction.
But sadly, this hasn't been the case.
In a letter to the Irish Times recently, the president of the Irish Association for Emergency medicine wrote that the NHS in the UK had abolished overcrowding in their emergency departments. The letter can be viewed at http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2010/0210/1224264109053.html
The same consultant went on radio recently, espousing the virtues of the UK system, and claiming the problem was "eradicated" by 2005.
Now, I was working in acute medicine in the NHS in 2005, and the "eradication" of overcrowding is a crock of balls.Yet this is what our senior emergency doctors are pushing for. The British model involved telling the population that they will no longer wait more than 4 hours for a bed when they attend an emergency department. Anyone who works in the UK knows this is rubbish. This was classic Labour party spin, and nothing more.
Sure, the stats say that 98% of people get seen within 4 hours. But that means very little. You might see a nurse practitioner, rather than a doctor. You might have the wheels removed from your trolley, so you now technically have a bed. You might get moved to a different corner of the emergency department, which is called "a ward". You would not believe the strokes that get pulled in effort to convince the British public that the 4 hour waiting period has been a success.
This strategy won't work without extra resources. You can't just announce tomorrow that all patients must now be seen and admitted within 6 hours, without providing new resources. We need more staff to see these patients. We need more nursing home beds for the 1000 inpatients who no longer require treatment in acute hospitals, but just can't be sent home safely.
We need expensive scanners being used out-of-hours, rather than sitting idle for 16 hours a day. People should not be in hospital for days, awaiting only the results of a scan. They should not be in an acute bed, waiting for a nursing home bed to open. And the exhausted staff shouldn't be lumped with more useless targets, without the resources to help them. We already have Irish doctors working up to 48 hours straight, so how are we going to work them harder??
This is all about resources. It's not about targets, and bullying and demoralising staff any more than they already are. But it won't be a quick fix. It may not win votes in the next election. Or the election after that.
Is someone going to step up to the plate and take this bull by the horns? Sadly, this doesn't look likely in Ireland. So, for the forseeable future, those who can afford it will buy health insurance. Those who can't will suffer poorer health. And those who are trained to work in the system will emigrate to Australia.
Dr. Thunder
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