Urology services suspended at Ennis Hospital due to 'unfilled' secretary role

In a "stunning lack of foresight", patients at Ennis General Hospital were told this week that their urology appointments will no longer be handled locally – starting immediately.

According to Independent TD for Clare, Deputy Violet-Anne Wynne, she was approached by a constituent who had been told by a nurse that no further urology appointments in Ennis would be offered past July, due to an unfilled secretary position.

Urology patients generally require catheter care every eight weeks, and when the stunned constituent queried what they were supposed to do now, they were advised to call an ambulance and report to UHL, according to a statement from Deputy Wynne.

It has transpired that the urology department secretary has retired and, due to the HSE recruitment embargo, there was no ready replacement.

The embargo was lifted last week, but Deputy Wynne contends this situation is "a prime example of its aftershocks which will be felt well into the future".

Read More: HSE recruitment freeze to end following allocation of €1.5billion in increased funding

“In May, I called the Recruitment Embargo a disaster during questions with An Tánaiste Micheál Martin. I now see that that was being too kind," she said.

"The Recruitment Embargo is a domino chain of disasters, one after another – and this government removing the recruitment embargo then immediately introducing a recruitment ceiling suggests the staffing problem may well be never ending.”

In the same session of questions, Deputy Wynne revealed that positions take four months to be filled from commencement of recruitment.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly specifically acknowledged in a separate PQ session that the embargo means some posts ‘cannot be filled’ after retirements or resignations.

If the Ennis urology position was recruited for the day the embargo lifted, it would be November at the earliest before the county could see a resumption of routine services.

In the interim, Ennis patients will present to the already overstretched UHL emergency department. They will be treated by practitioners who are not experts in catheter care, which will cause excess physical discomfort, and in all likelihood patients will not have a scrap of privacy.

These are patients who do not need emergency care; we only have so many ambulances, so many ED staff, so much capacity, and Deputy Wynne contends there is no logic in these patients receiving treatment
in UHL.

Unfortunately, Clare is not the outlier in being left behind. Similar issues have been reported in Donegal, where patients were told to travel to Galway for routine procedures due to staffing issues at their local hospital.

Deputy Wynne was disheartened – but after three separate PQs revealed more and more delays to the Ennis Dialysis unit, she was not surprised.

“Someone knew this was coming. This was not a surprise to anyone except for patients, who had dared to believe that their routine treatment would continue. It appears that healthcare in this country requires a full time advocate, even for the most standard care, asking the most asinine questions – or else care might simply stop without warning.”

The Independent TD said her office have brought this to the attention of both UHL Group CEO Colette Cowan and Regional Health Officer Sandra Broderick, who have promised to look into the issue.

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