Paediatric surgeons have warned that the National Children’s Hospital will be understaffed from day one and this “will impact negatively on the provision of safe and sustainable services”, the Dáil has been told.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald outlined the contents of a letter from all 12 paediatric surgeons at Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) who say their concerns about staffing have been ignored.
Ms McDonald said the letter, written to the CHI chairman, had also gone to Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill.
She said the surgeons at CHI’s department of paediatric surgery and urology outline that “bizarrely the plans for opening the new children’s hospital will see it understaffed from day one ... The surgeons believe they have been ignored and that the recommended workforce of 17 paediatric surgeons has not been factored in.
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“In their words, they believe that will impact negatively on the provision of safe and sustainable services. They go on to outline their concerns that this risk has not been properly assessed.”
Ms McDonald said “this hospital is now delayed five years and there still is no proper plan to open it”. And she asked Taoiseach Micheál Martin what he would do about the staffing shortfall.
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Mr Martin said the new hospital will be state of the art. “There will be a huge step change in terms of health and we need to match that with the required staffing levels.”
In the letter, the surgeons said “the national model of care for paediatric surgery clearly outlines the need for 17 surgeons” and “the implementation model provided for an increase of one to two surgeons every year between now and 2028″.
“In spite of highlighting our concerns on multiple occasions to the CHI executive team ... we are very concerned that the recommended workforce of 17 paediatric surgeons has not been included in either the definitive business case for the new children’s hospital or in any of the estimates over the last few years despite repeated requests from our department for this to be actioned.”
The surgeons also said there is “significant ongoing pressure for paediatric surgeons to meet HSE targets for new out-patient department appointments, while continuing to deal with the growing elective surgery lists”.
Mr Martin said that in his experience as minister for health “in the opening of any major hospital facility”, there was “always a subsequent debate and issue around the proper commissioning and staffing of a hospital, particularly in the context of movement from older facilities to a newer facility”.
The Taoiseach added that CHI has been working on the issue for quite some time and a whole range of structures have been set in place “to facilitate a smooth transition from the existing paediatric hospitals and tertiary hospitals to the new National Children’s Hospital.
“I accept, however, that this will be on a scale never experienced before, particularly in paediatric medicine.”
