Sick to blame for hospital woes say well-paid gurus

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Our health service remains banjaxed. Despite a name change – another one – Galway City’s public hospitals, and the overarching structure that manages them (it’s now called Saolta University Health Care Group, as opposed to West/North West Hospitals Group, all in the name of banishing the Health Service Executive West, previously known as the Western Health Board, to history), is paralysed to improve the service.

The local Emergency Department is particularly banjaxed.

They changed the name of that, too, a while back from an Accident and Emergency Department to an Emergency Department.

Nobody knows why, but a highly-paid PR guru/private consultant (not of the medical variety) somewhere probably thought by changing its name, the public’s perception of it would change also.

But the Emergency Department (ED) of University Hospital Galway, formerly known as the Accident and Emergency Department (A&E), still resembles a war zone.

And despite the name-change, the managers and administrators and PR people who are responsible for the ED have not changed tack in who they believe is responsible for it still resembling a war zone.

That’s right, it’s you, the sick patients, who are responsible for overcrowding in ED.

Saolta University Health Care Group issued a statement to local media recently, in response to overcrowding and war-zone conditions.

We won’t quote it verbatim but it went something like this:

“Dear Galway public,

don’t get sick,

Sick to blame for hospital woes say well-paid gurus

Kind regards,

All at Saolta University Health Care Group.

“Ps: If you do get sick, don’t go to the Emergency Department because we don’t have the personnel and/or beds and/or money to treat you, and you’ll probably be stuck on a trolley for a month at least, which will just annoy you and make us look terribly inadequate.

“Take an aspirin instead, and ring your doctor, maybe have a lie-down. Unless of course you’re dying, in which case you should just bypass the ED altogether and head straight to the morgue – it’ll free up a few beds for the stupid sick people who continue to ignore us and turn up at ED anyway even though we’ve told them not to.”

FHE gives Reboot the boot

Reboot Ireland, a ‘movement’ that is to become a political party, was in town on Monday.

Its main protagonists, Eddie Hobbs and Lucinda Creighton, addressed the crowd of about 40 or 50 who showed up.

A fair enough turnout but hardly a revolution on the scale of the night the Progressive Democrats were born in a jam-packed Leisureland in the 1980s.

Reboot Ireland chose the g Hotel to pitch their ideas to a Galway audience. What a strange choice of venue, you say.

Think about it though – the g’s décor is unashamedly loud, brash, posh and pretentious, just like Reboot Ireland, and its two leaders.

One woman who wasn’t present is Oranmore senator Fidelma Healy Eames. The bould Fidelma was best mates with Lucinda in their previous incarnation, Reform Alliance, but this week she confirmed she would be running as an Independent. Lucinda and Eddie, we hear, didn’t appear too upset at her decision.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.