Sir, - A recent 11-week encounter with our public health service has been the most unpleasant and upsetting experience of my life. I do not say this lightly. I have lived in many places and experienced my fair share of life's traumas and tragedies. However, at no other time and in no other place before have I felt so dehumanised or had my intelligence and dignity so abused.
I am well aware of the pressures on the health service, the numbers of people to be seen in any one day, and the heavy demands on personnel. My criticism is not about the length of time spent with patients but about the quality of that time. The time required to acknowledge a patient's anxiety and explain treatment courteously is no greater than that required to be rude, discourteous, insensitive and dehumanising. To treat with disdain those who are at their most vulnerable is a shameful abuse of privilege.
I have no reason to question the expertise of the medical treatment I received. My complaint - and I make it in the strongest possible terms - concerns the manner in which I was treated as a human being. My feeling at all times was that, had I been able to detach my malfunctioning part and send it in for treatment unattached to a sentient being, it would have suited all practitioners better.
"Care" is a word that kept recurring to me. Is it no longer part of the medical lexicon? Have science and technology completely ousted humanity and are patients now simply instruments in a medical project? A woman with a lump in her breast which requires surgery is understandably apprehensive. Neither explanation nor reassurance was offered to me by medical personnel staggering in their lack of communication skills and callous in their indifference to human feelings.
I suspect that poverty is my critical error. I am dependent on public health and I live in a society where care is a marketable commodity, not a basic human right. Had I been a private patient I would probably have been considered worthy of some degree of respect. The occasional common courtesy, such as an introduction, might have been proffered before medical procedures were carried out.
I may lack the financial capital to "buy into" care, but I do not lack the intellectual capital to identify and criticise abuse of position and inhumane behaviour. The medical profession may be training practitioners of undoubted technical expertise but they are turning out human beings who leave a great deal to be desired.
- Yours, etc.,
Mary O'Reilly,
The Lawn, Finglas, Dublin 11.