Consultant right to speak up for patients

I REFER to your report (June 24) concerning Jason Kelly, consultant plastic surgeon, and plastic surgery services at Cork University Hospital (CUH).

In it, Tony McNamara, general manager of CUH, was quoted as expecting “corporate loyalty” from Mr Kelly. Mr Kelly’s professional and ethical responsibilities as a doctor are to his patients and he has an obligation to advocate for them. Unfortunately, the mindset of senior management at one of our largest healthcare institutions appears to mirror Government and HSE policy of putting the organisation before its real shareholders — the patients. Numerous health scandals (eg, Hepatitis C, the Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, inquiry) have shown that many of them resulted from misplaced corporate loyalty put before individual patient needs.

Dr Stephen Mannion