Safety fears over home addresses on web database

FEARS for personal safety and the security of their homes have prompted doctors to demand that the Medical Council remove home address details from its online database.

Speaking at the Irish Medical Organisation’s (IMO) annual conference in Killarney yesterday, trainee psychiatrist Dr Matthew Sadlier said doctors were “heavily over-represented” in the population of people who are stalked. “I myself had a number of potential stalkers,” said Dr Sadlier, who works at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin.

Dr Ken Egan, a GP in Ballindine, Co Mayo, said he was one of six doctors whose homes had been burgled since Christmas. He said gardaí believe a professional gang was carrying out the break-ins because the modus operandi was similar in all cases.

“They took a seat out of the garden to block the driveway and they did that in the other cases.

“They also cut telephone wires, disabling the alarm,” Dr Egan said.

Dr Egan said he had spotted the burglars the previous day, lifting manhole covers, and covering them with tarpaulin, but presumed they were telecom workers.

He said they returned the next day, cut the phone wires into his house, disabled his alarm, and burgled his home.

“They were in and out in half an hour. It was a professional job. Gardaí told me other doctors had been burgled in Mayo, Sligo, Offaly and Galway and that the cases were similar. The only suggestion they could come up with is that the thieves got our addresses from the internet,” Dr Egan said.

Yesterday doctors voted in favour of a motion demanding that the Medical Council, in the interest of safety, publish practice addresses only on their online medical register, but withhold doctors’ correspondence address.

Doctors also voted in favour of a motion that the IMO call on the Department of the Environment to install carbon monoxide detectors and inspect gas boilers or oil burners in domestic dwellings to ensure they met EU regulations in view of recent tragic deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning.

North Mayo coroner, Dr Eleanor Loftus, said she believed there was “significant under-reporting” of deaths from carbon monoxide.

“As a coroner I am aware of a lot of deaths in old people by the fireside, where there may have been heart disease, but which could also be attributed to undetected carbon monoxide,” Dr Loftus said. There are approximately 40 deaths annually, officially related to carbon monoxide poisoning. Dr Loftus’ motion was prompted by the tragic death in Co Mayo on Christmas Day last of 20-year-old Padraig Hughes from carbon monoxide poisoning. His twin sister Emma narrowly survived after they inhaled the poison while asleep.

The IMO also adopted a motion calling on the Department of Education to scrap the new aptitude test students must now sit before being accepted for medical school. Dr Ruairi Hanley, a GP trainee in Co Louth, said the aptitude test was devised to humour parents “whose kids weren’t getting in to medical school”.

“There was nothing wrong with the people who were getting into medicine before that test came along,” Dr Hanley said. Prof John Higgins, consultant in obstetrics/gynaecology at Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) said the test was “a sop to the politically correct”. “The Australians, I believe, will shortly drop it from their entry requirements,” Prof Higgins said. Dr Matthew Sadlier said the new aptitude test would become a money spinner for grind schools.

The AGM concludes today.