A former director the Mid-Staffordshire Health Service in the UK has warned that fatality rates in Irish hospitals will rise unless there is some easing of budget cuts.
Mike Gill was speaking from experience when he addressed the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) at a conference in Croke Park, Dublin – during his tenure at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, an enquiry concluded that between 2005 and 2008 up to 1,200 patients had died unnecessarily due to the management´s prioritising of finances over patient care.
Mr Gill also stressed the importance in his speech of Irish nurses and midwives speaking out about the issues they encounter at the frontline of the health service. Condemning what he referred to as the “culture of non-reporting” he encountered while at the head of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, Mr Gill insisted that “the patient must always be the priority”.
His sentiments were echoed by the union’s general secretary Liam Doran who stated that “Mid Staffordshire has said that nurses and midwives cannot be silent. They cannot be silenced by the system, they cannot be emasculated by the system, they have to have the courage, when they believe care is being compromised, to speak up and speak out.”
He continued, “When that doesn’t happen, patient care and mortality rates actually increase and we have to listen and learn. We can’t pretend that we are not going to make the same mistakes as other health systems have when finance has been given priority.”
Before the start of the conference INMO had released a statement saying that the Irish Health Service was under unbearable pressure and Mr Doran had words to add to this also. “At the moment I don’t see any floor for the Irish health service, we still have the moratorium in place, we still have beds closed on an increasing basis, we still have community services being cut back and now we are told X hundreds of millions more has to come out for the fourth year in a row.
The conference also heard how the closure of 2,317 beds and loss of almost 3,000 nurses meant that union members had “never been more frustrated” at the failings of the system to listen to and act upon what they were saying. The union warned of increased mortality rates and wrongful deaths in Irish hospitals unless the Government reverses its policy of prioritising budget cuts over patient care.
Current proposals for health service funding could see a further 500 million Euros cut from the existing budget, following a 1 billion Euros reduction in 2011.