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POOR COMMUNICATION AND disrespectful treatment are among the main issues raised in complaints made about doctors working in Ireland, according to a new report published today.
A qualitative review conducted by University College Cork researchers found that concerns about misdiagnosis also feature prominently in sample complaints to the Medical Council.
In one complaint, a son claimed his mother had died two weeks after a delayed cancer diagnosis.
He said “she should have undoubtedly been diagnosed 17 months earlier”.
Allegations of failures or delays in the diagnosis of breast cancers featured in four of the 100 files reviewed in the sample study.
Others complained of a lack of compassion and communications in patient care.
Complaints commonly raised concerns about doctors not listening to patients or their family members.
One woman said a doctor treating her dying husband “did not even look at [him] as she passed his bed when she entered the house”.
A significant number of complaints were also made about the prescription of inappropriate doses or types of medicines to patients with mental health illnesses.
Medical watchdog
The sample testimonies were published today alongside the Medical Council’s latest five-year review of complaints made about doctors.
According to the medical watchdog’s report, there are twice as many complaints made about male doctors as there are about their female counterparts.
Complaints against male doctors are more likely to result in a fitness-to-practise inquiry, the study found.
Younger doctors, non-specialists and doctors who qualified outside Ireland were also more likely to experience a serious outcome through the disciplinary process.
The Medical Council received some 2,056 complaints between 2008 and 2012.
One in 10 complaints proceeded to a fitness-to-practise inquiry.
Doctors were sanctioned in 68% of these inquiries.
The review described psychiatry, cosmetic surgery, obstetrics, gynaecology and out-of-hours work as more “complaint-prone” areas than others.
Just under 3% of complaints to the Medical Council were made by the HSE or other healthcare organisations.
Yearly increase
During the period under review, there was a year-on-year increase in the number of doctors who had complaints made against them.
Professor Freddie Wood, the president of the Medical Council, said it is crucial to “collectively learn from complaints so that they are handled at the right level and dealt with in the most appropriate manner.”
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Comments closed on everything today bar the most mundane.
@Daniel O’Neill: Oh,for peat’s sake
@Daniel O’Neill: they’ll probably delete this too
@Daniel O’Neill: And even when you do comment it will only allow the most vanilla of replies for fear of offending someone. The journal is all about its clicks but if this horse manure continues the people won’t comment for much longer and will just drift away from the site altogether.
@Gerry from the Block: nah.. It’s been like this for years.. People drift in and out but it always has some base.. Just a slow revolving door
Didn’t read the article, but as long as we harvest peat we are only kidding ourselves about sorting climate change.
@DERRY1973: climate change is the new stealth tax that keeps talking and at this stage is it is going to take the citizens of Ireland to the cleaners to no avail because the it’s population of the world is the problem and taxes don’t make any difference except to those in middle income because the are subsidised to have children and stay at home for a hand living
Keep it in the ground, both in and out of Ireland.
@Peadar Ó Rathaille: that’s how I’ll be voting at the next elections.
Absolutely zero joined up thinking here on Planet Ireland. Can’t burn the peat here, but can import it and also vast quantities of wood biomass from some cut out rainforest.
Growing medium is something cyclically harvested out of integrated constructed wetland systems, on every suitable small stream and river, primarily for the sequestration of carbon, phosphate, and nitrates, before all our waterways and near inshore zones are ruined by eutrophication. This is where the farming subsidies should be going.
The mega one for the central bogs though, is a couple of SMRs into each of the old peat power stations. Then the data centres. Then the waste heat of both to a massive complex of hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaponics, all pesticide free. Then the fly factories, their larvae eating a large part of our one million tonnes of food waste a year, before being fed to the salmon and chicken, with the rest of the bog area re engineered for sequestration.
Remember though we are dealing with Bord na Mona whose understanding of climate action was to stop using peat, but instead import wood biomass from Queensland.
@Nicholas Grubb: you would think the green party would be all over this sort of achievable biodiversity.
Apparently not.
Should the mushroom industry not have been researching alternatives before now as the cessation of peat harvesting has been widely flagged for years now? It can’t have come as a surprise.
Lorry loads of milled peat been sent to ports in Belfast to go to the rest of the UK is just wrong and a shame to see. It should be banned and strictly enforced
Since when were local council planners, an bord pleanala, and the EPA, competent judges / authorities / consultants?
@Archie Lochus: since never!!
I didn’t read the article so I don’t know if it said that a lot of the peat we export goes to the UK and then we buy the exact same peat back. Utter nonsense
An informative article but gets a bit bogged down in detail at times…
The production of the food that we eat, the food that sustains us, is being impeded, disparaged, and heckled at every level by the ultra-green lobby, who appear to think that they should be in complete control of what we eat and how it’s produced. Would absolute dictatorship be a realistic description of this mindset?
Irish peat for the Irish people
There was me wondering why we’re importing peat at all since we export the stuff. Then I had a look at the table: Northern Ireland peat would be considered an import. Fair enough. Second on the list: the Netherlands. Further away than Great Britain. “Peat it says here on the import papers. Nothin to see here. Let her through”.
Exporting bog
have your say