Consultants reject claim action will hit patients

HOSPITAL consultants who begin their work to rule today over the Government’s unilateral plan to appoint new consultants have rejected a claim by the Health Service Executive (HSE) that their action will affect patients’ services.

General secretary of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) Finbarr Fitzpatrick said the organisation had made it quite clear to their 1,800 members that any activity involving patient care should not be affected.

Only committees discussing budgets, administrative matters and expert groups would be targeted in the work to rule, he pointed out.

A HSE spokesman said the action being taken by consultants was both unnecessary and regrettable.

“Their withdrawal from day-to-day management of hospitals and cooperation with the management will have some impact on patient services,” he warned.

Mr Fitzpatrick insisted, however, that any committee meetings involving patient care, either directly or indirectly, would continue to be attended as usual by consultants.

Cancer specialist Professor John Crown warned yesterday that a shortage of consultants was leading to a wholly inappropriate delegation of responsibility to trainee doctors.

“Nothing makes my blood boil more than asking for a specialist consultation for one of my patients and finding instead that a young trainee has provided the opinion,” he wrote in a newspaper yesterday.

Mr Fitzpatrick said a key to resolving that problem was to have the 68 consultant positions advertised by the HSE employed under the current contract or an agreed contract.

The consultants’ work to rule will be discussed at the IHCA’s national council on June 16 next but there are no plans to ratchet up their industrial action.

Mr Fitzpatrick said that consultants, because of the nature of their work, were limited in anything they could do to highlight industrial relation issues.

Meanwhile, the results of the ballot by 45,000 nurses on proposals aimed at ending their dispute over pay and working hours is expected to be known by next Wednesday — the eve of the general election.

Other trade unions and representative bodies have said that they would also be seeking a shorter working week because the nurses’ deal was outside the benchmarking process and national agreements.