HSE was warned over lack of secure facility beds

AS TWO doctors were last night treated in hospital after being stabbed by a psychiatric patient in Limerick, it has emerged that the Health Service Executive was forewarned by experts there would be “tragic, violent consequences” of a lack of secure psychiatry beds at a psychiatric facility only last month.

Four consultant psychiatrists wrote to the HSE days before the violent murder of Michael Hughes in Dublin in December. In the letter they wrote that the absence of secure psychiatry beds would result in denial of treatment to patients, enormous risk to their families and similar, possibly fatal, risks to staff in existing, low-security facilities.

“There will also be risk to the public with the real possibility of tragedies such as those seen in the Britain,” it said.

In that case they were referring to services at St Brendan’s Hospital in Grangegorman.

Just days after the letter was written a 24-year-old was charged for the murder of Michael Hughes after he had discharged himself from hospital three times while he was undergoing psychiatric treatment.

Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly, who secured a copy of the consultants’ letter, said it was all the more pertinent after the stabbing yesterday afternoon of the two staff members at the Limerick psychiatric daycare unit.

“The fact is wherever you look in the health service, whether it is A&E, cancer services, nursing homes or psychiatric services, you see the same thing: ineptitude, failure to plan and instead of a service now, promises about a service some time in the distant future. There have been too many cases where the HSE has shown itself unable to respond, in particular to serious distress flares sent up by medical professionals and others on the ground. I want to know how many more people have to die before the Minister for Health will act and finally take control of the health service.”

SIPTU said it was “appalling that it takes a violent incident such as the stabbing of the two doctors to highlight the HSE’s inability to discharge its responsibilities for the health and safety of workers in the mental health services”.

“The Government commissioned a taskforce in 2003 which reported on assaults on psychiatric nurses. But unions are still waiting for the recommendations for a no faults compensation scheme for nurses injured at work to be implemented,” said its national nursing official, Louise O’Reilly. “Spending on mental health has declined from 10.7% of the overall health budget in 1990 to 6.6% in 2005 and this is having a profound effect on staffing levels.”

The union called for a full investigation into the incident.