NURSING CRISIS: Is a 1% pay rise is too much? Are there better calls on that cash? We rely on the majority of registered nursing staff who work at the base of the pay scale to make the whole NHS thing work when resources are cut. We owe it to them and ourselves to admit there’s a much bigger problem at play.
There have been a number of excellent pieces on Slugger recently regarding Northern Ireland’s A&E crisis. A lot of suggestions have been put forward for how to tackle the crisis, and a lot of reasons have been put forward for why performance, in particular against the four hour waiting time target, has deteriorated in recent years. I have been sourcing data to see how some of these ideas stack up. Too many bureaucrats and not enough doctors It has been …
Hidden away amongst the discussion of the Compton Review Edwin Poots again mentioned the prospect of reintroducing prescription charges. There is a certain irony in this in that although it was Michael McGimpsey who ended prescription charges the DUP repeatedly claimed this move as one of the successes of devolution and claimed much of the credit for that decision. More recently, however, Poots has repeatedly proposed reintroducing the charges in order to pay for cancer drugs and the like. Part …
Waiting for Godot, one of Samuel Beckett’s greatest works, documents Vladimir and Estragon’s fruitless wait for the eponymous Godot. At times waiting for health reform in Northern Ireland has been rather like Beckett’s play: lots of promises that it is about to happen but nothing ever does. In 1966 there was apparently a plan to have six main hospitals for Northern Ireland and most of the reviews subsequently have suggested that as the optimal number of acute hospitals. Throughout Direct …
Events in Roscommon these past weeks show that politicians will never hesitate in making a step ladder of the people to get at a vote that could go to an opponent. The proximate political problem about the decision to axe 24/7 A&E at the County Hospital stems from the reckless promise made by the Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly to retain medical, surgical and other services, and to reinstate 24/7 A&E if necessary; and the fateful decision of …
