Lack of planning in hospital care is ‘lunacy’

HAPHAZARD planning and piecemeal development of services is hampering efforts to provide proper care to critically ill children, say hospital consultants and nurses representatives.

They say new services are being introduced without the necessary funding and existing services are being expanded without ensuring sufficiently trained staff to run them.

Professor Brendan Drumm, a gastroenterologist at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, said a major problem at the hospital was the continued stretching of 1950s services to match 21st century demands.