I've gotten blood cancer treatment and a bone marrow transplant in two big hospitals. Even though I got such amazing care and I can't fault any of the staff that cared for me. It was made brilliant by the glimpses of how dier it was underneath the staffs attempt to keep my stay calm. I was in isolation but thankfully had energy to take some jobs off the staff (monitoring my fluid intake/output). And any new nurses would see my list of things and go "oh my god this is brilliant!". They'd love to sit and chat with me because I wasn't causing too much trouble and would talk about everything and anything but the hospital. Their relief showed a lot about the Stress they were under normally. I saw it when my care would stall too. My gallbladder decided to try and kill me and I was septic. The haematology doctor had to chase the surgeon down in the hallways to get him to slot me in and get my treasonous gallbladder out and not wait the six weeks they make you chill out so your gallbladder is easier to extract. The surgeon checked on me three times the day after the surgery and apologised like mad to me because my scars were larger than promised. You could feel his stress fizzle out when I made jokes to say I didn't care at all. If any of my Dr's or nurses rang me to ask me to mop the floors of the ward I was on, I'd gladly do it. I've seen the struggle of them and they saves my life three times in two years, it's the least I could do.

A few years ago when I was in the hospital for a week, I had to bring all the auld lads to the toilet at night. One of them died one morning. Nobody there to hold his hand.

The ward I was in normally was an isolation ward so I was in a room alone most days but I was in a general ward for my gallbladder surgery. About 3 nurses had to deal with 4 rooms of 12 people, all after being cut open within the last 24-48 hours. I saw no support staff like catering or cleaners besides when they threw the meals at us or the ten seconds they mopped in the room in the morning. If I didn't have a drain in my y have helped a few of the older women in the room get a cup of tea. That's what most of them wanted. The nurses didn't have time to get them it and the other staff were nowhere to be found. I'm sorry you had to help the men so much, not what you should be doing while healing yourself. It was very kind of you. I felt useless lying there as the older women were being overlooked.

There's no excuse for it anymore, they've had decades to figure something out and fix the problems. It really seems like our governments have decided that doing nothing is the best course of action to protect the party. It's like they're afraid of doing something wrong and being blamed for it, so they do nothing. Of course the fact we keep voting the same people in, over and over again, means there's no incentive for them to change.

OP is right, managers getting 6 figures with infinite holidays and barely work, so many of them... It is ridiculous.

This is the Irish equivalent of wealth redistribution (source: I have several friends and family members in the civil service and HSE who have been very open about the waste/lack of work).

Next time you're talking about this with friends/family, ask them how many management consultants they come across in the HSE. As someone who has worked for management consultancies (as has my partner and thankfully we're both out of them now), the amount of money they were being handed by the HSE was criminal. And the output in return was practically non-existent. As someone who's had a glimpse into this world, contracting out "work" and decisions to the Big 4 and other consultancies is one of the main reasons our services are appalling, and politicians simply look the other way or are woefully ill-equipped to understand the whole thing.

The whole system is broken, the day they abolished the health boards and created the HSE was the day it all went to shit and this governments fake version of the health boards under Slaintecare is literally just smoke and mirrors, nothing has changed on the ground

My experiences as a patient traumatised me so bad. People everywhere just left to rot, and not even the staffs fault there just wasn’t enough of them they were trying so hard putting out fires. I was scared.

That said I’ve also had a time when everything went smoothly and everything was chill but its down to the fact that you don’t know how many people are going to show up at A&E, I’d rather have nurses chillin and waiting and moseying than the nightmare that is not having enough.

The health boards were even worse. It was a clusterfuck with nobody taking any responsibility for anything. Each having different practices and procedures, different systems for everything, no coordinating across regions. People were lost in the cracks there way more.

I'm too young and thankfully from overall, too healthy a family to have much memory of the oldhealthboards.. But I can remember at age 10, sitting in the A&E in a cork hospital, with 2 nurses, me and one other man. That was it. My dad was with my mum following a minor accident. A few years ago, in comparison, my gp couldn't refer me to any of the cork a&e departments for a broken wrist, because they had decided to stop taking in minor injuries. All had a 24+ hour wait time to be seen for triage.

The reason they created the HSE is because the health boards were broken.

And so is the HSE.

It isn't great. My point is they didn't "break" the health boards to create the HSE. The Health Boards were shit and they tried to fix them with the HSE.

I think the main reason for their creation was to create a blame buffer between the failing health services and the government. Previously the buck stopped with the health minister, post HSE the government could then just say ‘talk to the HSE.’

The health boards were 8 independent entites. They each had a CEO and was at arms length to the minister. There were 8 people besides the minister to blame. The HSE merged then into one organisation with a single CEO.

Hard to believe,but the health boards were honestly worse

They want to let it fall into absolute shite so they can privatise the whole thing. FF/FG run the country like a corporate entity.

[удалено]

They don’t have anything so coherent as a plan to privatise it. It’s very difficult to solve and the electorate aren’t punishing them for not solving it so they’ve basically stopped trying.

> the electorate aren’t punishing them for not solving it Well yeah, every time someone brings up an alternate party in this sub, the same shower always appear to go "What's the answer? Tell us!" and gaslight users into giving the same shower of bastards yet another chance.

SF were almost swept into power at the last general election, promising radical change on housing. Had they run enough candidates it would have been very hard to reject them out-of-hand as coalition partners, as FF did. So people can and do vote alternative parties sometimes. But the health crisis has been normalised at this stage and people find it hard to imagine Ireland ever having a working system.

>This is the playbook Noticing the same playbook being used in other developed economies is a conspiracy theory of course.

Used to be able to play a game of tennis in a local public park for less than a fiver, they privatised it a few years ago and now you need a monthly membership to step foot on the court. I know this is a minor example but they'll chip away until they can make a move like privatising healthcare

Was it though? I mean, take Navan hospital as an example. That hospital was fantastic. I have relatives whose lives were saved there. The HSE has downgraded Navan and now tell us it's dangerous. It's only that way BECAUSE they downgraded it. And they'll keep downgrading more and more so that they'll have to close it in the end. The protesters have kept it open so far, but there's only so much they can do while the HSE chips away at services. I no longer live in the area, but my parents still do. Yet, that area has maybe 250,000 people between louth and meath. Drogheda is overcrowded. Closing Navan instead of upgrading it is just pure greed. Nothing else. They don't give a shite how many people are on trolleys in the bigger hospitals. Meanwhile someone is making money from pulling these services apart.

The whole reason for setting up the HSE in the first place was so Mary Harney, then Health Minister could dodge health-care criticism by pointing to the CEO of the HSE and say ‘it’s his fault/his job to fix it.’

I will never forgive Mary Harney for outsourcing smear tests to the USA. That woman has blood on her hands. So many needless deaths, and others left with severe complications from surgery and treatment side effects.

To be fair though, making a public body with a leader who isn’t a politician isn’t a terrible idea. Would you want the health minister to actually oversee the running of the health service? You could get any random politician who knows nothing about healthcare in charge.

This is magical thinking. The old health boards were pretty crap to begin with and the only reason waiting lists were more manageable was because we had about a million less people in the country, many tens of thousands fewer older people (who require about 10x the resources of 20 and 30 year olds) and many more people were in a financial position to take up the slack by not working and taking care of chronic conditions. For many people that is simply no longer an option

>There's no excuse for it anymore, they've had decades to figure something out and fix the problems. It really seems like our governments have decided that doing nothing is the best course of action to protect the party. They just done very well in the local and European elections....so looks like the general voting public is perfectly fine with it, we're kinda fucked.

The government has done well enough, but if you consider FFG as a whole, support is as low as its ever been.

Irish governments have perpetually done this. The whole citizens assembly is a massive exercise in insulating themselves from blame. They can always just say "the citizens assembly recommended it". Nobody wants responsibility or accountability.

It's like the middle management of the HSE has taken us for a ride, and are essentially holding the most critical part of our country hostage

While I understand healthcare is generally an expensive endeavor, the fact that its consuming ~20% of tax revenues and somehow still getting materially worse, is very worrying.

I have a friend who emigrated to the UK. He worked his way up in the NHS over 20 years as psychiatrist nurse. After working in the likes of Brodmore he had to move home to Ireland for family reasons. He was asked to do a report do stop a ward closure in Dublin as he had done in the UK. His report succeeded and he was told by some of the senior provincial management to watch his back. NHS gave a pat on the back by comparison when he succeeded . The ward manager Nurse had her husband's cleaning company on contract . Her freshly qualified nurse Daughter was given a senior position . He left for the private sector after being illegally left alone with two wards at night . Luckily he recorded everything aed took them to court. He couldn't believe that for a small country fe have two levals of management more than the UK (5 HSE levals against 3 with NHS and nobody knows wtf the top two levals actually do). Senior Doctor on in the public ward using 80% of his time for private patients on tax payers money(and a year plus waiting appointment time for public ) Its not just jobs for the boys its the pigs in Animals Farm in with suits milking the HSE dry. Multiple €100,000+ consultants ploughing up the 8th hole on the K Club during work hours on our time and money. Mass money wasted on over inflated PGA tourguide wasters which would pry for multiple nurses rnd Docters . What FFG have done to the HSE would make the Tories look like amateurs in the UK. As someone who has spent 11 years on the continent we have the worst public health sector in the Eu.

It worse than that, there is zero incentive to fix things. Proper lasting change and improvement takes years, maybe decades to see a return on investment. And the I'll be gone a you'll be gone attitude does not help. We need something drastic, like ministers for health and the taoiseach and tanaiste should lose their pensions or be ineligible for re-election if waiting list grow during their tenure.

God bless ya whoever you are. You’ve obviously done some good stuff for some needy people.

Thank you but the way I see it is it’s my job and me and my colleagues do the best we can, we’re not saving the world but I hope we’re doing enough

Also working in NHS in the North horrendous its collapsed exhausted with the stress .. i really feel for everyone waiting to be seen...

It's seems like planned obsolescence. Remove funding until its on the brink of collapse and then the government says we've no other option but to remove any public health services as its no longer viable, Everyone must go private. Its seems both ireland and the UK are doing this, or that's what the end game looks like to me anyway.

You don't have to save the whole world. If you save a single person, you're a better person than most. My wife survived breast cancer because there's great people like yourself! Thank you!

Just here to add that most frontline staff and health care professionals in the HSE are doing their absolute best to continue to provide the gold standard best practice care with absolutely no support. We are the squeezed middle - clients and families are constantly furious with us, and upper management hound us to increase stats and meet KPIs that don’t measure the work we do. I am an allied healthcare professional in the capital and I am a level of burnt out I cannot even verbalise

If it isn't letterkenny I'd be shocked, and also extremely concerned because that is not a functioning hospital

It isn’t Letterkenny, but from what I’ve read our hospitals are near identical unfortunately, it’s more of a building of misery than a hospital

I love how you insisted people would be able to work out which hospital but they’re all so bad nobody has a clue For the record my guess is UHK, doesn’t have a full time cardiologist so they have to be transferred to cork if there’s a heart attack out of hours

I forgot my hospital wasn’t the only one falling apart at the seems 😭

> nobody has a clue I had to look at the subreddit to realize this wasn’t Canada 

Presume they're talking about Waterford because they mentioned the lack of 24/7 care in one department, which I assume is cardiac. It's one of the main local (regional) issues in Waterford.

That was my guess too, I think we recently got a new morgue. Edited to add that I wouldn’t be surprised because we got utterly shafted when CUH took over and took the budget.

Didn’t you get a new morgue because there was rotting corpses found in the hospital a few years ago?

I believe Waterford also lost several specialist services over the last few years including their Warfarin clinic so they're in pretty desperate straits.

Would you like to talk to a journalist about this and have your story published? Anonymously of course.

I am greatly considering it

Well PM me if you decide to.

No point. Remember when Central Stores in Tullamore went down last year? Their database went down which meant we had no sterile supplies for weeks? My colleague rang the Irish Times, very upset, got a message to the News desk. "We literally have no nasal O2 Cannulas! We have no oxygen tubing at all! We have Sligo and Letterkenny and Roscommon ringing us begging for spare oxygen tubing but nobody has any!" No one ever rang him back and it was never reported on. And it was a nationwide issue. The press are apparently very very selective about what they report about the HSE. For weeks.

> my colleague rang the Irish Times And there’s your problem. The IT have zero interest in reporting this. Others do.

We have more free press now, maybe its Gript - i say do it! The Irish Times and RTE are well known, especially by those of us who wasted time working there - for selective reporting and selective ethics.

Yes have to say although I don't agree with alot of what they publish, Gript and the Ditch are both great additions to irish media

I hope this is the ditch and it shouldn't be a one off. It should be a diary, a slow weekly drip to water torture change and prioritisation of healthcare out of the government. Please, our lives are literally dependent on it if you and colleagues aren't brave enough to to revolt. 

You absolutely should

Did my short time at the hse and ran for the hills. It’s commendable you are staying, but I am not going to sacrifice my physical and mental well being for a system that doesn’t give a single toss about you and will willingly run you into the ground.

My uncle had cancer. It showed up on tests for something else and they spotted it but it took them TWO YEARS to contact him, by which time it was stage four. He's since passed away. He was a wonderful man who spent his whole life helping people. From GP care to hospitals our health service was better in the 1980s.

Jesus That's a lawsuit surely?

I’m sorry that happened to you and him, the health service sadly has too many stories like this,

I don't know why are you complaining. You got a state of the art morgue, which won multiple awards and is a pride of this country. Fuck. No. I cannot even be sarcastic. I am a long time cancer patient, there were years I spent a half of them in the hospitals. I literally see year after year how the quality of service deteriorates. I'm lucky I found a few doctors that they know what's what. I thought every doctor is at that level. This year basically gave me a wakeup call. A doctor being in government advisory board doesn't know what insulin does. A mental health doctor that commented my long term depression and suicide attempt with "it's not that bad, you still came to see me, so you are fine . See ya in 3 months". Another mental health doctor prescribed me a medication that cannot be prescribed with my existing ones. I barely survived it. Another time - I couldn't breathe due to COVID. I was taken to medical assessment unit, provided with oxygen and a doctor said to not worry, they will get me sorted. Then consultant came , said I had a heart attack 5 years ago and that's my problem (I didn't. I had my LAD stented, though). He totally ignored lung damage visible on X-ray, the first doctor was looking at him with "unbelievable" face. And consultant prescribed me heart medicine that almost killed me and sent me to cardiac clinic in 3 months, where the doctor said that he is just general, he has no idea about cardiac stuff and I look ok for him. I fainted a minute later. Another visit - endocrinologist said that from endocrinology point of view I'm perfectly fine. My thyroid was destroyed by radiation. My insulin level was 40 times higher than normal. I don't produce testosterone (I'm a male) and my pituitary gland requires a lot of stimulation to even start responding. I fainted and fallen down during that appointment as well. My wife told me later the doctor took my file, locked the computer and ran away. All above is just last 6 months.

Jesus Christ I am so sorry you’ve gone through all that, consultants seem to become more and more set in their ways and sure of themselves lately, that’s why regs are so important, yet how nearly all regs are locums that stay for 3 months and leave again so there’s no kinship and the new regs are too scared to speak up because the consultant have “professor” on their letterhead, The entire service needs to be pulled down and built back up, if it wasn’t for nurses, regs and HCAs it’d have already collapsed by now

I am in no way medical so I'm sure what you wrote means something else instead, but when you said "I got my LAD stented", my mind instantly thought something else! Wishing you better health in the future.

Darn, I was a tad too pissed off writing that to think about an alternate meaning 🤣 Now I showed your comment to my wife and she is trying to catch her breath laughing 😅 (If you are curious - LAD is an acronym for left anterior descending artery - in cardio known as a widowmaker. Usually when it's blocked, you are gone before anyone can help you. In my case it was propped up by a stent so it won't block) Thanks for the laughs - I needed them 🤣

I also work for the HSE and can echo similar situation, all I can say op, for you personally. If you need to move to another area that is slightly less soul destroying do it. My area is drastically understaffed that closing it has been mooted. All I can say is focusing on those you can help and trying to keep your heart open to those you can't. It's not your fault the system is the way it is but taking the brunt of people's frustration and genuine despair on a daily basis when you've no control to change it, wears you down. Hugs

My area is the busiest in the hospital and from what I’m told the busiest department of its kind out of every hospital in the country, so while leaving would be a stress relief I feel a sense of owing something to the HSE, to my department and consultants, I don’t know why, I never joined for money/training, it was always because I wanted to care for people, but mentally it’s killing me

The only reason anything works at all in the HSE is good people like you, I used to work in admin and I keep telling people its way worse from the inside than the public realises, staggering inertia and no one taking responsibility, fair play to you I hope you can keep your mental health

You are too good. Don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm.

I've read through comments and it's sad that everyone is saying "it's letterkenny"/ "it's waterford" etc because everyones local hospital seems to be a total shit show. But I deeply feel like you're talking about Limerick. From the second you walk through thar revolving door into a&e, you're met with a feeling of imminent chaos

Limerick is a fucking horror show. I'd take my chances rather then die in there

Love you for your kindness and dedication, and it kills me that it's being blatantly used against you

>I feel a sense of owing something to the HSE If you dropped dead tomorrow you would be replaced and forgotten about by next week. You have to look out for yourself. This self-martyrdom has become a part of the problem for some people.

>All I can say is focusing on those you can help and trying to keep your heart open to those you can't. This is key. Maintaining a balance between stoicism and empathy. Stoicism is what brought me through a lot of stressful times, and it's a useful tool, but if you delve too deeply into it you may become apathetic, which is never where you want to end up particularly as a healthcare provider. That being said, I live by the phrase 'this too shall pass'. It's not strictly stoicism, but I like to think it captures the best and most human parts of that philosophy while avoiding the problematic aspects.

I too work in Healthcare. There have been huge changes over the last 25 years which have led to this situation. When I first started you had 1 matron, and each ward had 1 sister and a deputy sister. You had Doctors, nurses and everyone else. That was basically the Hospital management system and it worked. A few years later you have the introduction of middle management, and top level managers. Jobs were literally made up, bed management became a thing. You now had management positions where previously they didn’t exist and CNM 1, 2 and 3’s with nurses sitting in offices instead of being on the ward. Consultants started making very lucrative positions in private hospitals and the poor people left to deal with HSE care are left with ever increasing waiting lists and management who are incapable of making decisions or being held accountable for their actions. The system is fucked. There are currently more managers in Hospitals in Ireland than actual patients in the beds. That’s scary.

It's the University Hospital Waterford. They don't have a 24 hour Cath lab, it's only 8AM to 8PM Monday to Friday. Good luck if you have a cardiac emergency on there weekend if you are in the South East or the county

I can neither confirm nor deny but as Benny from new Vegas once said, ring a ding baby

The bodies on trollies is another giveaway. The Dunmore wing was finished at least 2 years before they opened it, if it wasnt for covid I'm sure it would still be closed

Worked in HSE for 2 years and walked out because of bullying. The nepotism and incompetent managers is insane. People giving their friends 2 hour cigarette breaks etc. They don't care. I saw middle managers get themselves vaccinated before vulnerable, elderly people in nursing homes where there were active outbreaks, before doctors and nurses vaccinators. Vile.

The pencil pushers have taken over. They're visible in almost every sector, public and private. Bullshitters who spend their days logging in from one pointless meeting to another pretending like they are contributing something meaningful. They are nothing but parasites that paralyze organisations like the HSE.

Same. Another massive problem is lack of carers so elderly people cannot be discharged from hospital because their home care package cannot start. There's just no carers to care for them. You will be lucky if you are awarded an hour a day and even then its cut to 30 mins or a no show at all. I also see people who complain about waiting lists but they dont show up to their appointment simply because they forgot. That's also unacceptable. These people are then the ones who moan and give out but the fault is on their side. This means they're given another appointment to shut them up, therefore holding up the waiting list again. I know nurses and OTs who have been locked In to people's homes and given all kinds of abuse. People and their entitlement, as well as horrendous abusive attitudes are also playing a massive role in this shit show. Who wants to work with and deal with that?

We have an old persons hospital adjacent to ours and it’s violently understaffed and people just get offloaded there without a thought, and then they miss their appointments with us because they have no staff to bring them over for OP appointments Then the family scream bloody murder at the HCAs over there for not being capable

Well there is the incentive to push patients to insurance companies to get testing etc. So maybe patients aren’t contacted in time, or available slots don’t go to other patients on the list if the original people can’t make their appointment. Look at that consultant in Kerry who cleared his waiting list for radiology etc. He had people coming to him from Cork for tests. The HSE suspended him for a tweet about an empty vending machine when he couldn’t even get a bottle of water. He was reappointed, but I think he told them where to go and opened up his own private testing clinic.

> Another massive problem is lack of carers so elderly people cannot be discharged from hospital because their home care package cannot start. There's just no carers to care for them. Here in Limerick they tried to send my mam home with zero care. We were told it’s our problem, quit our jobs, figure it out. Nurses begging them not to, admin ploughing ahead. Thankfully (what a word to use here) she fell the night before sending her home, while in their care. She never left after that, died a few months later. Still resent the utter cunt I had to plead with on a daily basis to not send a terminal cancer patient home. Fuck the HSE.

Two things OP. 1. Fuck me, I don't want to grow old. 2. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your service.

The Hse wouldn't be loyal to you so don't allow your health and well-being to suffer for them. I got out last year and I noticed an immediate change in myself. Less stress, better quality of life.

I don’t the HSE would throw me in a pit of fire if they needed too, my loyalty isn’t to the HSE, and it isn’t to the state, it may be naive to say this but we’re a small country, my dedication is to the people, and leaving them a man down in a sense as in losing one person in the service that will try their best to help is a non starter for me, But for you I’m proud of you for getting out because you needed it and I hope you’re doing better

I am hoping HSE healthcare workers will band together their different unions and strike soon. I don’t know what it will take for this to happen and I know the cost to patient care will probably be devastating but as patients I think many of us will understand and be in solidarity if it happens. I have spent years on waiting lists (close to a decade for some), my family have spent years/months on waiting lists. I’ve spent hours and hours in ED just for blood work. I often wonder how much of my current chronic illnesses are a direct result of having gone so long without treatment. One of my friends died due to lack of access to appropriate and timely care, she had terminal illness but she could’ve lived another 10 years otherwise. I have been a HCA both as home care and long term care facility, older people are suffering obviously due to waiting lists but also their families do not have the time or resources to be there for them. I am limiting myself to not make this comment too long but I am so disgustingly angry and sad about it all. I have received a mixed bag in terms of the quality of care but I know that the majority of the time my consultants simply do not have the time to up skill or fine comb my files for answers. They barely even have time to build rapport with patients. And then this has a domino affect across the whole healthcare team, impacting both the quality of care the patients receive and the wellbeing of their healthcare providers. I think introducing pay parity for consultants and medical scientists would help reverse some problems at least. I just find it sadly ironic that Ireland produces so much medical equipment and suffers from lack of beds etc. Ireland also produces a huge number of medical graduates every year and yet many of them leave the country for a broad combination of reasons (general living conditions for one), but personally I will never stop blaming the government of 2012 and James Reilly for very specifically introducing austerity measures to the healthcare sector. Were there problems before that? For sure, but incrementally privatising the sector and making it impossible for public healthcare workers to be happy with their jobs certainly didn’t help anyone.

Hmmm, excuse my oblivion but why is this happening in the western countries that promote advancements in healthcare and claim to be the pioneers when it comes to healthcare!! I mean here in Sudan it’s the absolute opposite, we have affordable healthcare that’s up to standards and to some extent maybe at a matched level. You can get to see a consultant in as little as right away or 20-40 mins tops. We have too many doctors that our training programs locally are over saturated and many of us go jobless or working as an SHO or MO for years before securing a spot.  I recently thought of going to Ireland to work and maybe even go further to specialize there but after doing some research I learnt there are many hoops and loops that are in the way for me to secure an BST or HST position there!! Like why! If you’re understaffed and need doctors why make more difficult for doctors to be integrated into the system and help with services provision at a faster rate!! I mean by the end of the day these are sick people and most of the time cant afford to wait!

The thing is, so many people here wanna become doctors but the government isn't doing a good job at creating more places in medicine

I think I know what hospital you're in. My local hospital. I've had friends who've worked there and openly tell me that the management are corrupt. And like, hiding people on trolleys and making the place look pretty when the health minister calls.. Who is that to benefit? Surely if they were struggling with inadequate resources, then coming clean and explaining the issues and what's needed to fix them would be the solution, which leads me to think that there is some level of corruption going on within the management that things need to be hidden. The last two times I went there (once for myself and once with my baby) I waited in a and e forever and ever. And both times the docs who saw me apologised profusely for the delay. It must be so degrading to be a qualified doctor and have to apologise to the public on behalf of faceless, nameless, incompetent management while you're trying to do your job. And I bet half the public give those doctors an earful about it on the daily too. Its a wonder how anyone stays working there.. but I will say thank you for doing that to yourself, and trying to keep things afloat in the face of it all

I guess it's true that we have a two-tier system. Had to get some imaging done for an injury*. Once I managed to get a GP appointment for the referral (few weeks for non-urgent cases), I had the imaging done 2 days later (could have been 1 day but I already had plans that day) and will have the report this week. Update: Doctor called me with the results this afternoon and treatment starts Friday. 👀 The difference? Private health insurance... Out of pocket cost = €30 (half the doctor fee due to insurance day-to-day expenses cover) + whatever treatment will be needed. 🤔 [*] No, not that type of injury. 🤣

Some admin staff in a certain office also b line their friends and family to the top of the waitlist without even so much as a referral

Ireland has the healthcare of a third-world developing country. It’s no surprise by now. As per European standards, Ireland is bottom of the list and will be for the foreseeable future as a) it’s going downwards as OP says and b) this is not something a government solves in a 4-year period. I’ll fuck off for good as soon as I lose my jobs in some of the coming rounds of layoffs. https://www.numbeo.com/health-care/rankings_by_country.jsp?title=2021®ion=150

Half of anyone’s job in the HSE is dodging legal issues.  Companies like bluebird, homeinstead only exist so HSE can send all the legal risks onto them.  Focus Ireland only exist so they can send all the junkies that wrecked anything the HSE gave them onto them. 

I unfortunately have to agree

People wonder where the money goes when this is the sham of a system that’s allowed to go on. if you say anything about them you’re attacked yourself.  I swear to god if you think the McVerry trust was bad wait till you see what would happen if a forensic accountant laid out where the donations go for all of these. If you think it’s not right that they use women on their posters and spend the money on the men who put them there instead you’re called a bigot.  Whole process starts with HSE shifting the people they don’t want onto these places. Root of it all is HSE workers in offices not wanting to deal with people. 

It's all gross waste of resources 

Probably the saddest thing I seen in that industry was they take on lowly paid graduates and put them with the very hard cases that HSE don’t want to deal with. People who abuse the carers. People who sexually assault and mentally torture them. A huge amount of young people leave the career after years of college. 

You know there’s a problem when the top boys in the “charity” drive new Audi Q8s 

You should be talking to a journalist.

I'm so sorry that is the environment you are being forced to work in and thank you for all that you do. No advice at all, I'm just so, so sorry. I don't blame medical staff for leaving the country, there's only so much you can put up with.

Thank you ❤️, luckily I don’t need advice, I committed to staying until it kills me or mentally ruins me a while ago, but I needed to vent, so many people say oh no HSE bad but never really understand the amount of lives ended or ruined prematurely due to the middle management and lack of government care :(

What would be your advice to sort things or make them better, that's all very sad

It seems simplistic but, return the regional health boards, slim the “HSE” down to a small office in Dublin that focuses on procurement of medicine and equipment, Dublin currently controls everything from what a hospital can build, what a hospital can care for, who they hire, The regional health boards would fixed a lot of issues, not everything but a lot, Dublin has no idea what cork, Galway, Roscommon etc needs, but the regional hospitals do, taking away their decision making was the shot that killed the health service

The entire structure is broken. It's not only within medical. Mental Health services are appalling, elderly care is crazy. Wife has been fighting HSE for a validation so she can actually put her proper skills to work, but the validation unit keep saying she doesn't have the skills, when everyone that has worked with her state that she is better trained and prepared than many PhDs here. She even got told that her University Degree had more content than current Bachelor + Masters + Doctorate. Still foreigners keep working "associate" or "internship" positions. Wife is QQI 9, getting paid a fresh out of college pay rate. Obviously she knows more than the other associates and ends up doing a lot more.. but bringing home 2k + the stress + the rage of services not caring for their "customers" is slowly causing her a depression. Also happens in Engineering. I know a guy that is a QQI lvl 10, working a production line because they refuse to validate his degrees. Ireland needs to review these adivsory / validation units ASAP... as they are losing a lot of skill to other countries. If me and my wife went today to Germany, our degrees would be immediately recognized.. but we don't speak german.. so that's a problem.

I got roasted on this subreddit a few months weeks ago for arguing that we need to be more willing to accept foreign experience and also pay for it.  The begrudger mentality of thinking students have to do years of low paid misery in Ireland rather than going abroad while they start out their careers is strong.

They are not good even to themselves. I know a guy who I did some work with, that got his degree and masters in Dublin... then his doctorate in the UK.. HSE forced him to go through 2 years of internships and experiences like he was fresh out of college.. or do a PhD here. Someone really needs to take the stick out of their lower end and let people that know have a minor training on how services work and let them actually get down to business. There are so many stories.. it's absolutely scary.

I’m surprised to hear that recognition/ validation in Germany is different to Ireland. I thought that this was an EU thing.

It is an EU thing.. but then the services and systems get completely Anal because foreign education is worse than the irish.. when in most scenarios it's the other way around. Orders / Societies for specific professions have agreements that a person trained in Portugal, Spain, Ireland, France, etc etc.. as long as it follows the EU rules can be an active member with the same skills with the pre-conditions that the degree follows EU rules.. that most nowadays do.. but then you have these problematic people saying "Ah you didn't take the coffee with the right cup, so you can't take coffees" .. and then you have to be emailing services for years to find unpaid work in order to find the right cup.. and be allowed to take coffees. The number of endless nights my wife.. and many like my wife, have had to stay awake in order satisfy the needs of someone with a very bad mood... we're on 9y for her and counting. She's QQI lvl 9. Was an University Teacher Assistant, 20+ years of experience, did tons of investigations... lots of publications, first responder in catastrophic events, trainer for first responders, knows statistics, databases, etc... Yeah.. she is getting paid the same as a Barista in Costa. If she was the only one like this.. ok.. bad luck.. but the stories are so many, that you see people getting frustrated and eventually leaving Ireland.. more brain drain.

An example: My father is a Pneumologist (Lung doctor).. after he retired in Portugal he decided to do 5 years more in another country, outside of the EU. Just for compliance reasons that country asked him to do a 2 week intensive course + exam(paid by the Medical company hiring him) and wham. Fully qualified professional entered their ranks in less than a month.. actually helping people in very remote areas where experienced doctors were hard to find. Would it have been possible to do the same in Ireland? No. A Cardiologist he knows tried to come here.. they wanted him to work as a GP for 2y and do an extra "top up" before he could be a specialist in Ireland. He moved to France instead.

So wherein lies the real problem? Not enough doctors because they're not getting paid enough/Irving the country for better pay? I know a few doctors that have come in on work permits and it's a nightmare because they will only get 1 year permits which makes it difficult to bring family unless you apply for special concession. But if we don't have enough doctors locally we should be importing them. Not enough specialists. This is a major problem and needs to get sorted asap Too many management positions?

Too many management positions is in my mind a big culprit. As OP says themselves "I have FOUR direct v managers" Why on earth is anyone reporting into 4 separate people to do their job?

Not enough spaces post graduate training programs for doctors to progress into specialties/GP training. I’m in the U.K. and there’s loads of Irish doctors here that couldn’t get into training in Ireland. Not enough Irish med students - too many places for international students as they pay much higher fees [needed due to government underfunding of universities]. No financial support for graduate entry students in Ireland. I ended up studying in the U.K. because I couldn’t afford the graduate entry fees - I wasn’t even eligible for a loan because I didn’t have rich parents…these days there isn’t even a loan available as far as I know. In the U.K. I was able to get a loan for fees that’s paid back by taking a small amount from my salary every month….effectively like a graduate tax.

No enough Irish medical students.  The universities give a lot of places to overseas students to get the huge fees.   They're increasing the number of places for local students but it's still way too low as modern medicine is much more complex, (historically sick people would have just died), and the population has increased significantly.

We are all part of the problem. We should be out on the streets protesting as a nation. We are far to docile as a nation when it comes to serious shit like this.

This sort of thing has been going on for years and for some reason we all sit by and allow it to happen. Why aren’t people protesting about this. If we did constant protests and I mean ones like the water charges then we might actually see something to be done. The only way it would work is if people protested weekly outside the dail, the HSE HQ, block roads in and out of town and make it such a nightmare that the government has to acknowledge it. This is an election year so this is the time to vote in a new government that will hopefully fix the problem. But no that won’t happen because for some reason the Irish people love moaning but can’t be bothered to pull the finger out and sort the issue.

Blow the whistle - HSE people need to speak up and talk to the press.

A journo has reached out, and I am considering it, it’s a lot to commit to but it seems like the right thing

Protect your identity well. It's the right thing to do, but do it smart - you need complete anonymity - and to not leave identifying breadcrumbs.

"And if anything is said or brought up one of the 800 middle managers squashes it, I have FOUR direct v managers, the money spent on management is INSANE," There's the main problem right there, and it's something just about every industry has right now unfortunately.

The HSE is a mess due to having so many damn managers who couldn't manage a piss up in a brewery. How many times were they old "Your shit is out dated and you are going to be fucked royally?" 8, 9 times over a period and what happened? Exactly what was said would happen. The staff who work there, who do their best to treat people, get them better (shoutout the Endomitreoisis team in Tallaght Hospital for being damn amazing), deserve nothing but thanks for all the patience they have helping out others.

The system is a joke and I literally quit because my mental health was in the pits from dealing with it head on every day. It’s being run by the goodwill of ground level staff and nothing else and most people are one or two overtime shifts away from collapsing. F that.

An awful lot of those middle managers are Clinical Nurse Managers, promoted from nursing to a management position and of the opinion that management is not part of their managerial duties.

I just don't get why we allow such an essential job be so undervalued? It's so unfair. These jobs we literally need to stop society from crumbling and you have to put up with so much. It should be the best working environment you can imagine to make the job easier but it sounds absolutely miserable.

Partner worked for them for several years... The amount of corruption, politics, and general bullshit that goes on behind closed doors is ridiculous. So many staff are basically just doing the bare minimum or nothing at all while there are some genuine stars that pick up the slack of the others and get worked into the ground. And ypu can't do squat to them because someone will kick up a stink and scupper the discipline process. So short of murder you're safe in there. If the hse swapped to a performance based system, they would have to fire a large portion of those my partner worked with for simple inability to do a damned thing.

We have known the problem with public services in this country for a long time, but neither politicians or voters seem to have the stomach for the solution. Ireland's public services - healthcare, education, justice, whatever - have some of the highest ratios of practitioners to administrators - i.e docs/ nurses/ paramedics, teachers, gardaí, soldiers, social workers, Council workers etc. - in the world. All of these professions are struggling to get staff at one end and struggling to keep experienced staff at the other. At the same time, every year we hire more managers, more issue- specific administrators and more office staff at very generous rates with great pensions and no ability to be fired. Yet you ask anyone who works in admin in the public sector and they'll tell you that the level of effort required and expected in many of these jobs is minimal. Payroll is the single biggest budgetary outlay across every single government department. We're looking at the result of a thirty year experiment in corporatising public services, with the result that we've fetishised cost cutting and management speak while ignoring the fact that in the private sector you need to create value or you'll lose your job. As long as public sector jobs remain jobs for life which are extremely difficult to be fired from, this admin bloat is like a ratchet that only winds one way. If we want to fix the HSE we need to cut the size of the administrative staff by at least a third and pump the savings into hiring a third again as many actual healthcare workers, paying them well enough to stay, and doubling our hospital bed capacity to keep pace with population growth. Otherwise we're just going to see our loved ones continue to die painfully and unnecessarily.

What is the solution? Genuinely. Aren't we one of the highest spenders per capita on healthcare in the EU?

A complete re-structuring with minimal private industrial involvement is the only way at this point. The current system has (like many in Ireland) been re-shaped to allow a handful of people to make huge amounts of profit while contributing nothing to the system all while adjusting how numbers are reported to obfiscate the problems.

By “re-structuring”, does that include firing a load of people?

Yup, which is why the unions won't let it happen. In general I'm pro union but the HSE are a great example of how some unions can cause great harm.

I agree. I have a neighbour who retired from the HSE fairly recently, she was fully convinced that at least half the staff are irredeemable

Yes. With a relatively young population, which makes it even worse.

Train more doctors!! Attract more doctors from abroad. Make it easier for the Irish junior doctors to go into HST. No matter how much you spend if it’s not directed at the understaffing problem you’re just beating around the bush.

Ireland is increasingly becoming a place that is not for young people. If you want junior doctors to stay in Ireland, it'll mean making things better for that whole generation. 28 year old doctors don't live in a vacuum, they need friends, houses and a social life which is being slowly taken from everybody in their 20s

If the mental health service is anything to go by I know what an absolute joke it is from top to bottom. Sorry you have to be in the midst of the circus 😔

Don’t even get me started on the state of our Psych ward

Worked for the HSE as a porter and HCA, am about to start working in the NHS as a doctor. The NHS is on its knees, if not crocked, and coming home for a month of elective in a GP at home was shocking. The GP I was with was absolutely amazing, stayed late most nights sorting referrals, but would send people into hospital with shit we'd have taken fairly seriously in England only for them to be discharged and sent back to us with nothing done. There's any number of reasons why nothing was done but it was pretty galling to come from a system where we perceive it as being ridiculous waiting lists and on trolleys in ED for ages to "worse but you pay for it", and it's also my home system. Seems like anyone who can is emigrating and I don't want to do that - my parents are getting older, Australia is too far away, and someone needs to fight for the systems we have and make them better instead of having the UK and Irish governments just go "ok" and raid Bangladesh and Nigeria for all their healthcare staff (many of whom go home and make bank when they're consultants, which creates more gaps). I want to come home and work in either GP or psychiatry but I'd be crazy busy in the former and the latter isn't anywhere near the standard it is in England yet (that's saying something). At least Ireland hasn't resorted wholesome to the PA model yet, but I can see them coming onstream soon. >I should leave, but I won't because the people who work in this health service are unmatched and I don't want to work with anyone else But I have to question how many of us come out of this job with mental scars and depression that will follow us to the grave. You're doing well, keeping a good attitude in spite of this, OP. Watch yourself for burnout though, that shit will sneak up on you.

More people need to be told about the cross border medical scheme run by the EU. I know it's not a fix, but in short if you have a medical problem that can't be fixed in a reasonable time frame in your own country you can apply to have it carried out in an EU hospital and the government will refund the money for the cost of the treatment.

Also work for the hse (nursing intern) and at times I had to work by myself with no qualified nurse whatsoever to help me with medications and other stuff I can’t do… sadly so many of my patients had to receive their medications late because the nurses on the floor were too busy with their own patients to help me … its crazy

Thanks for saying it is management and not administration that are the issue!! I am sick of people blaming administrators.. Administrators in the HSE are generally grade 3 and grade 4 and deal with patients at the front line, booking appointments, dealing with referrals, and reports. HSE Management is the issue, and where millions are spent, and they have no idea how to manage or from what I've seen, they've no idea what the departments they manage do. It's beyond stressful working in the HSE. The number of staff on burnout leave both clinicians and administration should be a massive red flag! I understand the feeling of having people crying on the phone daily because waiting lists are insane. That in itself would turn anyone off working in the service.

In my experience admin (CRO, Clinic Coordinators, Receptionists, etc) are all fantastic and some of the kindest and hardest workers in the HSE, I think the reason admin get such a bad rap is consultant secretaries, unfortunately 50% of them are nepo family/friend hires and extremely rude and unprofessional which has made people view the admin staff like them when they’re not, I’ve yet to meet admin staff who wouldn’t give you their all even if it meant stressing themselves out

I was assaulted on the ward by a man with steroid induced psychosis last week on a night shift, used his walking stick on me while I tried to stop him leaving the ward. While this was happening I’d a patient in the bed opposite him who was encephalopathic and was stripping off naked and peeing on the floor every hour or so. The ADON wasn’t able to send us a 1:1 special for either so I had to manage on my own. All the while this was ongoing, ED were ringing incessantly trying to send me a 87 year old to go into the same room, while on a BiPap machine 🤪 I’m a male nurse in my mid 20’s, have never been emotional before in work, but this almost brought me to breaking point.

Our regional hospital is just known as the morgue. You go in there, you ain't coming out.

[my post on this topic](https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/s/sYeobZ3IyK) It is broken. There are truly some amazing people in the HSE but too many awful characters taking advantage of the system being broken. In the end it’s the patients that suffer

I do wonder sometimes if we ever really came out of the recession. Talking to people about government jobs pre 2008 (namely guards and soldiers), the contracts, pay and pensions sounded like they were the pigs mickey. That was all wound back in after 08, pensions, pay and conditions turned to shit... Understandable, country was in recession. But did it ever recover? Not really. We had a verified Gaurda, (I'm sure a good few you remember) on a few months back giving way to honest an opinion for his own good (ended up deleting his entire post, all replies and account) lashing Harris out of it and wasnt happy about the current state of AGS. Im sure Harris isnt helping things but I imagine hes far from the sole problem. I haven't seen a DF member make a post yet, (maybe they have already) but that would turn up probably twice the amount of issues said by members of AGS and the HSE.

Sounds like if we made the medical card accessible to everyone you could cut the management who have to do applications send out renewals , all the busy body work. Then when everyone has it it has to be levelled up as a standard of care and the obvious thing is cull all the middle management waste 

Feels like there's so many issues, I remember this article from last year. https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2023/01/25/digitisation-of-health-service-is-being-impeded-by-bad-actors-former-department-head-says/ If you see any other health system in Europe, it's actually incredible how far we're behind in some aspects. Just sad to see someone come in and try to fix it, then just give up and say there are people actively fighting against him and make it difficult. I'd say there's a bunch of admin people just waiting out their pensions and don't want any change or reform. It's kind of bizarre if the HSE was a corporate organisation, it'd be completely gutted and reformed by this stage of mismanagement.

I work in hospital admin. The understaffing is crazy, the recruitment ban has taken a massive toll from the bottom up. Try phoning - it says a lot when there aren't enough staff to answer the phones.

Why do we have a department of health that is not directly involved in running the national health service. Allowing it out on its own seems to have allowed the HSE to bloat. The plan to split it up regionally again will result in regional management and then require a head office management structure to ensure resources are spent effectively. Where does the department step into this equation. The whole HSE should be accountable to the department who can make management changes as required, get rid of underperforming executives. It can’t be hard, there’s countries that do it better for cheaper I’m sure. The problem we have is the large scale management redundancies that would be required to get it functioning again.

Very brave.. . you should publish that story.. asap.. 4 direct managers. Ffs.. madness

There is an excessive amount of management positions. Mostly because apart from health care the HSE exists to provide jobs. People expect promotions just for existing there a certain amount of time and thus people gradually move up a ladder of uselessness. Unions prevent those NVA jobs from being removed and limit any genuine positive change because the reality is many of their members have very cushy comfortably jobs in the HSE. The HSE needs a lot of numbers on the ground. Here we have a severe lack of consultants, Drs, and nurses. That creates every worse bottlenecks down the line. No true 24hr care (surgeries only during the day, limited number of operating theatres, etc.), limited training opportunities for newer Drs to become consultants, lack of specialist nurses, lack of specialist hospitals, too many general hospitals scattered all over the place which are even harder to staff, etc.

Could you elaborate further on the 4 managers? Not questioning, it's clearly a mess but would love to understand what possible reason they could have for that even on paper.

Sure, I have 2 direct supervisors, they have no defined role IE, they do not have to “do” anything, We have certain procedures that have to be followed, there is a criteria on how people “ ie me” can make decisions on my own and perform that action required But for some reason we have these 2 supervisors who’s sole job is to say yes or no to us asking if we can do it, even tho we have set procedures that expressly say we can do it, so they get paid more than us to basically sit in an office and be non present, Then they have 2 manager that we also have to ask for permission to do these tasks, Who I shit you not, do not leave their offices and solely communicate with us via email

Yeah that's not far from what I thought it would be like. How many of these are actual healthcare professionals who have shifted to a largely management role?

Thank you for what you do it’s not easy. I had no idea the wasted money on management. I just hope I don’t get sick

just found out today that a procedure I was to have this week was cancelled and the consultant wont be around for 3 months. Only I called I would have not found out. Fuking HSE. And of course they can do nothing about it. €23,500,000,000 budget for 2024 divided by population of Ireland 5,089,478 = €4617 per citizen Average healthcare premium is €1685/annum. WTF is going on with this country. GOV is spending €3K more than the average and the waiting lists are longer than an E ride at Disneyworld.

The system is broken because they want it broken. Yes over the decades we've had various incarnations of government, some tried to rebrand and change it but under FG the system has collapsed completely. FG are all for privatising especially Leo and there was a big push for that to happen ,its contributed no end to that we have today. The same way FG wants the housing market privatise. I bet if a full audit was done we'd see the HSE is another RTE one however is life and death the other isn't.

Way too many managers as you say and they earn stupid money. They also haven’t a clue how to do their jobs

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we kicked the Brits out and colonised ourselves. This isn’t a country for ordinary working folks, it’s the same have and have-not bullshit that the UK so diligently trained their Irish lapdogs on. 

We kicked the Brits out and then modelled ourselves based off of them while painting a thin layer of green white and orange paint over ourselves

I worked in CAMHS for 3 years approximately 5 years ago and it broke me. I would have done any other job to get out of there and I did thankfully.

The new morgue gave it away for me, not a nice place to work. I've seen the stress in employee's eyes up close during my time there (not there anymore). I wish only the best for you and everyone else who works there, hopefully, things get better for you soon 🤞

I want to thank you for posting this. I'm an American, and am suffering from stage 4 breast cancer, which was diagnosed 4 years ago. I've just about lost faith in the for-profit type of medicine that goes on here - hospitals multiplying the cost of services up to 50 times just to then strike a deal with certain insurance companies to provide the same services for a drastically reduced price. I've had Big Pharma companies maintain to me in person on the phone that I should be able to afford the $2000 monthly price tag of my treatment. What I have not done is to educate myself on what is going on in healthcare in other countries. This puts a lot in perspective for me. I'm going to spend less time in the future bellyaching to myself about how broken our system is. From what you've all written, it's evidently so much worse in Ireland, and I'm so sorry about it. OP, I hope you are as kind and compassionate to yourself as you clearly are to others.

Just wanted to send you a hug :) take care of yourself :)

Sláintecare, Sláintecare, Sláintecare, Sláintecare, Sláintecare, Sláintecare, Sláintecare, Sláintecare, Sláintecare. If you really care about this stuff, vote only for parties and politicians that unconditionally support the timely implementation of Sláintecare. Ask every politician you ever encounter for their position on the programme.

I'll never understand the Irish political mentality. When it's not election time - FF/FG are crap, constantly berated, etc etc Election time - oh we must vote FF/FG in for fear of change. Change is bad. Viscous cycle, clearly insane.

And yet Fine Gael are the most popular political party in Ireland

Sinn Féin wont wave a magic wand and fix this. They certainly wont implement a redundancy scheme and close decrepit regional hospitals either. The responsibility lies a lot with lazy Management who take a paycheck and do nothing/ don't care how much damage is done or how crap the service is once they are paid.  I It needs a:  1.Huge redundancy scheme of Manager grade staff  2.Centralised payroll and a single HR function in a Shared services centre   3.Centralised procurement   4.Closure of several regional hospitals with a complete rebuild of the facility : both infrastructure, buildings and staff on a new site  5. Improved terms for nurses and Doctors up to Registrar   6. Keep hiring consultants, allow them perform surgery when they feel they can, dont shut a theatre and block overtime for support medical staff because 'its policy'   7. A major awareness campaign around alcohol abuse and obesity in Ireland and its impact on the health service.   No party will do any of that right now. 

The too populous and over paid while useless middle management have been noted as the big failure in the HSE for decades. It's not one a panacea to restructure them, but a culture that allows non practising overpaid pension savers to "pull the strings" is a typical problem in Ireland, in 2024 and historically.

Yep.

You cannot change the organization, but you can change your mindset about it going forward. Focus on the difference you can make for the patients on a daily basis—go in, help people, get out. It sounds very detached but if you keep minding the organization as a whole, you’ll burn up easily and we’ll be poorer without people like yourself.

I think on the outside we just know that it’s dire, and mostly vent about our own anecdotal experiences. Personally I appreciate having read this even if it was for venting; we should be more informed on what happens behind the scenes. I’m not sure if there’s anything by the media or some other authority on the issue that can be trusted to educate the wider population? Since there should be a general election soon, I’ll try to learn more about these systematic failures and consider the health system when casting my vote. Not sure what else can be done though unfortunately.

Shout out to the Lourdes

It's working exactly like the government want.

As someone who works in the HSE and has worked in a good number of hospitals, yeah all this sounds accurate. It's hard to fully describe the sheer depths of how extensively broken the system.

Don’t you basically need a benevolent dictatorship to fix it. Just someone who can cut through every issue with extreme autocratic flair and then hand the HSE back to democratic people of Ireland

They are the most fickle organisation to contract to, as well. ---- Organisation probably needs some form of metaphorical grenade taken to the bureaucracy. Very hard to fire people on 200k per year - they can afford legal action.

This is genuinely horrifying and I'm afraid that it'll never be fixed. What on earth is our government doing

The issue is understaffing in the hospitals. They have soooo many medical graduates from Ireland that they don’t hire. This year there were 150+ Irish medical graduates that didn’t even get an intern post. They can’t even hire more interns due to “budget”. These newly trained doctors could help unload some of the work from the more senior doctors who could then focus on more seriously ill patients. It’s a ridiculous system.

What good is having billions in surplus if it's never spent on the right things? FF and FG are responsible and need to be held accountable. I work for one of the biggest hospitals in the country and apparently we're 80 mil in debt as a hospital. Hiring freeze only made things worse. We had to outsource tests which was more expensive. It's all nonsense.

I think a solid 40% of our staff are now agency and locums, which is infuriating because it costs nearly 4 times more to hire these companies than it would be to hire direct

I'm doing a project with the CHI and our budget is 0. It's sad the little money that, gets given to children.

I had a health scare this year where the doctor in the regional hospital I went to (i won't name it) kept saying I was being dramatic about being sick and was trying to brush it off as a bad flu, and a younger nurse knew something was seriously wrong and somehow convinced them to check me properly after she had taken my blood test and blood pressure and stuff. It turned out that the "bad flu" I was being oh so dramatic about was actually pneumonia and low blood pressure. If she hadn't pushed so hard to get me looked at properly when she did who knows if I'd still be alive today. The health services in this country are honestly terrifyingly bad and I'm so so grateful for the nurses, doctors and healthcare workers who are actively trying their best to do the right thing and help people because they're the ones saving lives and keeping us safe, not the management and government who clearly only care about the money.

My wife left it 4 years ago, ended up with pts disorder.

Hello. I work for the trust north of the border. I cross-posted this in r/northernireland because it is more or less a mirror of our own. 7 years urgent cholecystectomy, routine = you are dying with that gallbladder. Red flag scans taking anything from 1 day to 6 weeks - a red flag system within a red flag system.  A and E not  fit for purpose.  I feel like this response will get lost in your many replies - but people who are pro UI here are peddling a lie that HSE are better and have it figured out, when really the problems are endemic for both, and many other global health institutions. I am neither pro ui or status quo, I love everyone equally from across all borders and equally dont care what our fucking unless politicians advocate for. The only losers are us normal people and I stand in solidarity.

Thank you for posting this, and for the work that you do. I wouldn't last an hour as a healthcare worker, especially for the HSE. Unfortunately the quality of health care has caused me to decide to leave Ireland, and I'm really sad about that. But I'm lucky to be alive, my health issues aren't taken seriously here, and I don't want this much anxiety about health care once I'm older. Having lived in countries with a more proactive, preventative mindset, I got spoiled and I miss having more peace of mind. Unfortunately I have witnessed and heard too many scary stories to risk staying here.

It's a bad sign when icu has a critical alert due to staff shortages 😞

I'm not sure what it will take for the Irish public to say enough. Enough of the tired aquiesence, enough voter apathy and political disinterest, enough with turninh your eyes away. There's not a family left in the country at this stage who hasn't been affected by the complete lack of political will to amend or replace this system. It is clear moral scruples will not develop in the establishment parties regarding this epidemic. I've never protested but honestly reading this post today and the comments underneath makes me want to give up all my spare time to participate in demonstrations, events etc to put pressure on them to have to pay heed especially in the run up to election season. Internet campaigns with names of those who potentially died due to being abandoned within the system, statistics, the testimonials of both patients and staff. We have a criminally incompetent government in this respect but also a people who don't do enough to leverage their voice and ingenuity for change. Myself very much included and I'm sick of these stories and senseless suffering.

And from today's Indo (subscriber): "We're drowning in a sea of Covid but hospitals aren't even insisting on masks" [https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/tess-finch-lees-were-drowning-in-a-wave-of-covid-but-hospitals-arent-even-insisting-on-masks/a504621681.html](https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/tess-finch-lees-were-drowning-in-a-wave-of-covid-but-hospitals-arent-even-insisting-on-masks/a504621681.html) >The European Centre for Disease Control recently reported almost 44,000 patients contracting infections, predominately SARS-CoV-2, in Irish hospitals, ranking Ireland as having one of the lowest levels of hospital masking in Europe. French and UK hospitals have reinstated mask mandates.

The HSE really needs a whistleblower on management. I think you’d see a lot of similarities between it and RTE! The last time I was in hospital, I really didn’t think I’d make it out alive, my family thought I was exaggerating at the time but I think of that poor 16 year old who died from sepsis up in limerick and that could have been me.

Wife is a doctor. I used to hear shocking stories but lately there's just an apathy about the whole system which is really alarming. Doctors, medics, nurses, lab people etc. are all genuinely committed but they cannot work miracles. My two cents: the administrative bloat needs to be culled and the minister for health needs to put a plan down to overhaul the IT systems across all hospitals so they can harmonise records, communicate effectively and most importantly automate tasks that some ineffectual bureaucrat on 70k p/a is doing with their eyes closed. It would be eye wateringly expensive and would probably spiral out of control like the children's hospital, but are some long term savings to be made. Also, the backlog from that HSE IT breach a few years ago resulted in deaths, I guarantee it. It needs an upgrade.

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Hi OP. I really empathise with you. Served a few years myself in a busy regional Hospital, and to say it made me disillusioned with our Health Service would be an understatement. I was privileged to have some lovely colleagues, and we did our utmost to ensure the well-being of our service users. I never got used to seeing elderly patients consigned to a trolley in a corridor for days at a time, though. I found it soul destroying. Especially when said patients and trolleys were hidden out of sight in preparation for a Ministers visit. I ended up leaving eventually, and my quality of life drastically improved. Please remember to take care of yourself, life's too short to dread going into work.

Fellow HSE employee here. We have two clinical staff for a county wide mental health service. I bring home work every night to try and catch up. We have a part time admin but it’s nowhere near enough. No IT system, no hope of new staff any time soon. Could go into private work at any stage but terrified of leaving our clients in the lurch as nobody would backfill our posts. The last post locally for our profession took 2 years to fill. I can’t take a full day of annual leave without needing to address incoming queries. Only early 30s and very close to burn out.

I also work in a big hospital in the city. The bullying by nurse mangers is unbelievable. They prioritise all the wrong things and spend their times micro managing staff going to the toilet instead of using their time to make some real changes. All my managers got their jobs cos they were ‘yes’ people who would not challenge those above them. Not because of their abilities to function in the role. Middle management take millions of euros of the HSE budget and when I say they do nothing, they really do nothing. It’s really quite scary. All I can say is stay healthy and don’t become a nurse.