Sir, – Your article “Lay people do not pick surgeons, say judges” (News, August 19th) raises an interesting question. I think the judges have picked a rather poor example.
In my opinion, surgeons are chosen for the most trivial of reasons. A patient might like his interaction with a particular surgeon in an outpatient clinic, and with no rational analysis of his surgical skills, choose him on the basis of bedside manner alone.
A patient may ask a GP to choose a surgeon for him, but in all probability the GP will also choose the surgeon on the basis of personality or because they were in secondary school or medical college together. My GP told me that he is no better informed than a layperson in terms of the competency of any particular hospital specialist. He has no HSE statistics or data of any kind to help him to choose a surgeon on the basis of experience or results. He cannot tell which surgeons have the highest or lowest mortality rates. Equally he is given no HSE data to inform him which hospitals are best in terms of results, infection, waiting times, etc.
A judicial appointment made by a committee of lay people from different backgrounds, sitting in committee to make as rational a decision as possible, is vastly superior to the current medical referral process. – Yours, etc,
GARRY BURY,
Dalkey,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – Of course lay people pick their surgeons. When a layperson is referred to a surgeon’s clinic, he has the option of attending or not attending that clinic.
He then has the option of consenting or not consenting to any operation recommended by that surgeon.
Patients are not the sheep that judges seem to think they are. – Yours, etc,
LESLIE LAWLESS,
Dublin 4.