A leading international researcher on the effects of healthcare facilities on patient safety and medical outcomes said today he was "shocked" by what he had seen of public hospitals in Ireland.
The Irish Hospice Foundation launched a new campaign in Dublin today demanding single rooms and hospice-friendly policies for all patients in all hospitals, whether or not they are terminally ill.
Speaking at the launch this afternoon, Prof Roger Ulrich from the Center for Health Systems and Designs at Texas A&M University, said that while he had little experience of touring hospitals here, what he had seen either in person or through photographs given to him, had left him "rather shocked".
"Irish healthcare in many respects has quality but the infrastructure is well behind that of any other major affluent nation that I'm aware of...The packing of wards, the high density of patients, the noise, the lack of dignity and the total absence of privacy, are all characteristics which scientifically suggest that many facilities are infection traps," said Prof Ulrich.
"These hospitals are also poor environments from the standpoint of the staff. These are stressful workplaces where staff will have to work very hard to perform significantly less well than they would in more modern, better designed facilities," he added.
Prof Ulrich said that there was a need to improve traditional hospital buildings, arguing that crowded wards and shared bathrooms caused stress to patients and were more expensive in the long run than newly designed facilities.
He cited a number of studies which indicated that hospital-induced stress shortens life expectancy
Prof Ulrich said there were widely held beliefs obstructing the adoption of single room for patients in particular, with people fearing that they might prevent the observation of patients, were more expensive to build and required higher nurse staffing levels.
However, he said that evidence indicated that single rooms were "less stressful, promoted healing and were safer for all categories of hospital patients."
Currently, just 6 per cent of accommodation in Irish public hospitals is provided in single rooms and that even some of these were not en-suite or fully wheelchair accessible.
Prof Ulrich was joined at today's press conference by actor Gabriel Byrne who launched the IHF's new Design & Dignity Guidelines which provide advice on design and planning for hospitals so that they can support end-of-life care for patients.
Mr Byrne, who said that there is a need to put "hospitality back into acute hospitals" pointed out that some 300,000 people die each year in hospital with six out of 10 people dying in hospitals of one kind or another. He claimed that many people were dying in situations that lacked dignity and privacy.
"I've not been in a hospital yet in which I would imagine myself being sick, or someone I loved being sick in. That's not the fault of the hospital or of the doctors or nurses who do an astonishing job. It's a problem for all of us because how we treat the sick and the elderly is a reflection of who we are as a society," said Mr Byrne.
"This is something that not a privilege but is a right. Proper healthcare conditions are something we have an absolute right too and we should passionately and collectively demand that and not be waylaid by a sense of powerlessness about the inevitability of it all," he added.
