The National Maternity Hospital acknowledged yesterday it was unacceptable that one of its patients had to wait three months for results of a smear test.
The Master of the hospital, Dr Declan Keane, attributed the delay to a shortage of administrative staff. The postal system may also be partly to blame, he said.
A woman patient of the hospital contacted The Irish Times yesterday to say she had undergone treatment under general anaesthetic at the hospital last April after having had an abnormal smear test result. She presented for a further smear test in October, as part of her check-up, but heard nothing about the results until this week.
She received a letter on Tuesday this week which indicated abnormalities were still present and she has been advised to return to the hospital on February 25th for a further assessment.
The young woman was very upset about the delay and worried that information which could be critical to her health was withheld from her for so long.
"I'm furious. That is just incompetence. Administration is to blame because my consultant marked the test urgent and the results came back within a month.However, after contacting the hospital to complain, it has emerged that the consultant dictated the letter which I received on November 11th but it wasn't typed until December 11th and it wasn't posted until Monday of this week. That was the postmark on the letter," she told The Irish Times.
Dr Keane said smear tests were analysed at the hospital's own cytology laboratory and the results were usually available within three weeks.
"There is something very strange in this case. This patient's referring GP was sent a letter before Christmas and a copy was meant to go to the patient at the same time," he said.
However, the fact that it took weeks for the letter to be typed was "unacceptably long", he said.
The hospital, he added, required more clerical staff but "a diktat" from the Department of Health stressed no further staff should be recruited.
Dr Keane stressed that had the patient's test results shown a serious degree of abnormality, she would have been contacted straight away. Many women regularly have to wait two months or more for smear test results across the country.
Ms Alison Begas, chief executive of Well Woman in Dublin, said her organisation took more than 10,000 smear tests annually and the normal waiting time for results was now eight weeks, which she agreed was too long. She said a Department of Health document had stipulated the wait should be no longer than four weeks.
"As far as Well Woman is concerned, it gives conflicting messages because it means as clinicians we are telling women it's important that they have a regular smear test but at the same time the healthcare system is telling them it's not important enough for the results to be returned quickly," she said.
"For the most part, it is unlikely abnormal cells would turn cancerous over the eight-week period women are waiting for results but the delay causes huge levels of anxiety and fear among most women," she added.
She said more cytologists should be recruited to analyse the tests in hospital laboratories and the cervical screening programme, introduced on a pilot basis in the Mid-Western Health Board area, should immediately be extended nationwide.