Medical records ‘the same as in Victorian times’
Matthew Sadlier claimed that the recording and dispersal of information was not all that different from the 19th century.
When patients are admitted to hospital emergency departments, it could take hours, even days, to get their health records from their GPs, or another hospital they attended. “This leads often to critical decisions being made by the patient or their family on remembered treatments at what is often a very critical time,” said Dr Sadlier. “In one of the smallest countries in the developed world, this is a disgrace.
“We need a robust, countrywide electronic medical record system that would include a unique patient identifier for every man, woman, and child in the country.
“These innovations could significantly improve the quality and safety of patient care in the country. I don’t believe these measures would require huge cost, but they do require will and determination at both political and managerial levels.’’
During his inaugural address to the organisation’s annual general meeting in Killarney, Dr Sadlier said society should no longer tolerate pejorative terms for certain mental health conditions, pointing out that demeaning terms for those with different skin colour or sexuality, for example, are no longer accepted.
“Yet we still allow the misappropriation of mental health terms such as schizophrenia being used to describe someone with ‘split personality’, or ‘psychotic’ to mean someone with either extreme illness or violence,’’ he said.
“Until these words are seen by society in a similar light to racist and other demeaning terms — and we adopt a zero-tolerance approach to their use — the stigma of mental health will remain.’’
Dr Sadlier, a full-time public psychiatrist with no private practice at St Brendan’s Hospital, Connolly Hospital, and the Mater in Dublin, also warned of a drift of highly qualified doctors from this country because of a recent “dramatic’’ salary reduction for consultants.
He told delegates representing 5,000 IMO members that the medical workforce was mobile and there was a huge demand internationally for those qualified to specialist level. Ireland was competing with many other English-speaking countries.
However, Ireland now has the lowest-paid medical specialists in the English-speaking world, which would cause “significant impairment’’ to our health service, he said.
Ireland has always relied on recruiting Irish graduates back who had trained abroad to return and lead innovation within our service, Dr Sadlier said.
“The policy of graduating increasing numbers of doctors from our own medical schools will not solve this problem either as almost 50% of graduates are leaving after their first year of practice within Ireland,’’ said Dr Sadlier.
