Who to blame for patients suffering on trolleys

IF the Health Minister and her advisers get their way, this may be the last time I am allowed to write to the Irish Examiner. Soon, I will be expected to “share any concerns” with my line manager rather than “go to the press”.

Moreover, another component of their campaign to get doctors to shut up (“distrust him, he’s a doctor”) may have become so effective that no one will actually believe me.

So here are some parting home truths your readers might bear in mind in the run-up to polling day. Every year, one-third of the population (and in Cork that means about 100,000 citizens) visit A&E departments. Every year, their experience gets worse. And every year since 2004, the ‘Minister from Dublin’ has asserted that the A&E situation is “improved”.

Indeed most of your readers will have read this assertion on huge posters all over the southern capital for weeks now. But your readers, having made over 250,000 visits to the A&E departments in Cork during that time, can judge for themselves who is speaking the truth. Many of them will have seen at first hand this week the dozens of miserable patients on trolleys in the corridors of Cork city’s emergency departments.

And many more will spend days on hospital trolleys over the next fortnight. May I suggest that your readers ask all aspiring TDs to describe their contribution to emergency care in Cork, both past and present.

It’s true, as the ads say, that past performance is no guarantee of future results, but it can be a reasonable guide.

And on May 24, please remember it is not despairing frontline staff but the politicians we elect who actually determine the health service we receive.

And, perhaps, deserve.

Dr Chris Luke

Emergency Department

Cork University Hospital.