Beaumont chief quits over ‘unsafe’ mental health policies

Mental Health Reform has criticised a major acute hospital for leaving patients at risk of suicide in its busy and overcrowded emergency department for hours on end.

The clinical director of Beaumont Hospital in Dublin has resigned because he feels the situation was entirely unsafe and indefensible.

It was reported in a Sunday newspaper that Prof Shane O’Neill, the hospital’s most senior doctor said he could not stand over “significant clinical risk” in an email to the hospital on Friday evening. The doctor was not referring to patients who had self-harmed or overdosed needing medical or surgical intervention, but those who were suicidal or suffering extreme psychiatric episodes, such as psychosis.