HSE jobs embargo hits patients and staff

I had reason to require a visit to the Eye Clinic of Cork University Hospital recently. I took my place in the queue.

In due course I was called, details taken and asked to take a seat in the adjacent corridor. I could not believe the numbers of people who were lining one wall of this very long corridor. Nurses were working flat out.

Some patients seemed to enter and leave consultant’s rooms several times, I can only assume these were the people whose eye problems were most urgent. We all sat in quiet resignation waiting for our time to arrive.

The average wait time for the majority of us seemed to be three to three and a half hours. Doctors were doing Trojan work, appeared to take no breaks but were relentlessly seeing patient after patient. Nurses were visibly exhausted from their efforts. Stress is a major cause of illness and while I waited I observed everyone under incredible stress.

Doctors and nurses were overworked and patients were stressed through lack of communication and because their valuable time was not respected. The people there had things to do, family to look after, jobs to go to, appointments to keep, long journeys to take back home but none of that seemed to matter.

Surely healing begins with empathy, consideration, kindness and love. It would appear that many more doctors and nurses are needed and this is an issue which must be addressed by government, but in the meantime if patients must be processed three hours or more before seeing a doctor the respectful thing would be to let them know.

Many of us could have been given permission to leave for an hour or more which would have been much more healing than being required to wait in the overheated, airless corridor watching the dry paint. We must bring back an atmosphere of care, respect, love and healing into our hospitals. A little empathy and consideration would go a long way.

Ann Fogarty

Foxwood Drive

Rochestown

Cork