Doctors call for mandatory rehab for people found guilty of drink driving

PUBLIC health doctors have called for mandatory rehabilitation for anyone found guilty of drink driving.

Dr Declan Bedford, a public health doctor with the Health Service Executive (HSE) North East, said international studies had shown one in three people caught for drink driving were not first-time offenders and that sending them to rehab could be the necessary “wake-up call”.

“It is a problem, people repeating the offence. Most are well over the limit, it’s not just one drink,” Dr Bedford said.

Dr Fenton Howell, also a public health doctor in the HSE North East, said when people persist in drink-driving it had to be asked if that person had a drink problem.

“If that is the case, banning them from driving for two years is not the solution,” Dr Howell said.

Both doctors, who are attending the AGM of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), in Killarney, Co Kerry, proposed the motion that the Government introduce legislation to ensure all persons guilty of drink driving go for mandatory rehabilitation and assessment.

However, this was amended to mandatory assessment and voluntary rehab.

Dr Bedford said the drink driver, and not the state, should pay for this treatment. It could take the form of counselling, Dr Bedford said.

In a separate motion, Dr Christine O’Malley, geriatrician, called for overseas doctors who treat Irish- based patients to be registered with the Medical Council.

She said an issue had arisen at Sligo General Hospital in relation to US -based doctors who signed off on cervical smear tests outsourced to Quest Diagnostics in New Jersey.

“How do we know these people are doctors?” Dr O’Malley said.

She said if a doctor in Ireland is not on the medical register, he cannot write a report on a patient – yet doctors here were expected to accept that cervical smear reports written in the US and returned to Ireland for follow-up are written by doctors whose authenticity cannot be checked on the Irish medical register.

Dr Neil Brennan, respiratory physician at the Mercy University Hospital (MUH), Cork, said the IMO had raised the issue with the National Cancer Screening Service but had not received a response.

“This is a matter of patient safety and of patients having a recourse in the event of something going wrong,” Dr Brennan said.

Charles Normand, prof of health policy at Trinity College Dublin, also raised the issue of cervical screening in a separate scientific session.

Mr Normand said Ireland was “setting up the wrong system” by introducing a three year instead of a five-year screening programme.

He said best evidence showed five years was the optimal screening interval.

“The evidence is now very clear, we should not be doing cervical screening every three years,” he said.

Mr Normand said over- treatment of people with suspect smears unlikely ever to become cancerous could do more harm than good, causing side-effects such as infertility.

Mr Normand said this was not a criticism of the new national cervical screening programme, that the critical thing was to get universal coverage.