Let’s focus on success of the Peamount

MUCH has been written and spoken about the proposed changes at Peamount Hospital in Dublin.

Only 30 of the 330 beds in the hospital are now occupied by the TB unit and the great work carried out in the other parts of the former sanatorium have been overlooked.

Thanks to the improvements over the last decades in the treatment of TB, as the wards in Peamount emptied, the board made good use of them to treat other patients.

The unit for the intellectually disabled is one of the best I have ever visited. It was set up in the 1960s to get patients with mental handicap out of our ancient mental hospitals where they had been 'dumped' by society. The patients were encouraged to be as active and independent as possible.

The industries section was planned to make the best use of their skills. A proposed new unit will allow for better facilities for these patients who are now older, and for day patients to be catered for as well.

The Rinskey unit, a day-care unit opened last year to cater for elderly people in the district, is such a success the hospital board realised that a unit for the intellectually disabled on a day basis would be a great boon to such people and their carers.

The wards for long-term care of the elderly have been praised frequently by the Tánaiste, Mary Harney.

Her dear father died in the unit and such was her gratitude to the staff there that she used compensation money she received for a libel case to build a gazebo and little garden for the patients outside the wards.

Some years ago a unit for the young neurologically disabled was set up. Many of the young patients have been seriously injured in road traffic accidents, and there has been a desperate shortage of beds to continue their rehabilitation.

A major expansion in this area at the Peamount is well under way and occupational therapy staff posts have recently been advertised.

Sin scéal eile a book by patients in Peamount, some of whom are neurologically disabled was published recently.

All the initiatives are not due to bright ideas from the board (of which I am a member) but due to a strategy for the hospital developed by the staff with the assistance of outside consultants. It is a pity so little of these positive developments at Peamount are known.

The board did not lightly decide to change the functions of the chest hospital. Pulmonary rehabilitation is to continue, but if acute admissions cannot continue following advice from Comhairle na n-Oispidéal, the Department of Health, legal advice and that of an expert in risk management that has to be so.

Senator Dr Mary Henry,

Seanad Éireann,

Leinster House,

Dublin 2.