Sir, – I was very interested in Roger Murray's Opinion piece (December 16th). He asks the question: "Why does the HSE keep hiring such bad doctors?"
Unfortunately he doesn’t provide the answer.
Everybody is truly appalled by the conduct of the HSE but should think about the underlying problem.
The HSE, unjustifiably, employs bad doctors because in Ireland we cannot attract “good” doctors to work in our dysfunctional public health service.
As professor of academic medicine in Trinity College, Dublin, I and my colleagues from the public medical schools, enacted, in part, Medical Education in Ireland: A New Direction, commonly known as the Fottrell Report, written in 2006.
One of the objectives of the report was to increase the number of medical students in Ireland so that the vast majority of “trainee” doctors in Irish hospitals would have been trained in Irish medical schools or within the European Union. We successfully increased the number of medical students only to find that now almost 40 per cent of “trainee” doctors working in our hospitals received their medical education outside the EU.
Irish graduates are leaving the country immediately after their internship year due to a series of decisions by the HSE and the government. Irish graduates perceive that they will not receive an adequate training in Ireland, and that working conditions and accommodation are substandard.
When trying to negotiate a new consultant contract with the HSE, I suggested that one day a week should be devoted to training or research. The HSE response was that they paid consultants to treat patients, not to train other doctors or conduct research.
A number of journalists and commentators have repeatedly claimed that the Government has no philosophy about the public medical service.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Fine Gael-led government clearly wishes to drive people into private health care and gradually dismantle the public health service.
Witness that most modern therapeutic interventions for cancer therapy are in the private sector while the public sector is starved of beds and funds.
As we have heard from the present Government, the policy is to develop an American-style health service, which is primarily aimed at the wealthy. – Yours, etc,
SHAUN R McCANN,
Professor Emeritus
of Haematology
and Academic Medicine,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.