Children’s Hospital puts in request for more staff

15 November 2009  By Susan Mitchell

Management at Crumlin Children’s Hospital have lodged a formal request with the Health Service Executive (HSE) for more staff in order to alleviate waiting lists for cardiac surgery.

Crumlin is seeking the appointment of an additional consultant anaesthetist and a perfusionist to operate heart and lung transplant machines. It is also seeking four additional intensive care unit (ICU) nurses and five ward nurses, which it said would enable it to optimise its resources.

Hospital management are also looking at the option of using facilities at the Beacon Hospital in south Dublin, where there is spare capacity.

Professor Mark Redmond, a cardio-thoracic surgeon, said: ‘‘It is being looked at, but it is only being mooted as a backup plan."

When Crumlin’s waiting list soared in previous years, children were sent to hospitals in England and the US for cardiac surgery.

However, Redmond, who travelled to the US in the past to perform the operations, said that using Beacon and exploring international options would only be necessary if the HSE failed to okay the hospital’s request for more staff.

‘‘We would all obviously prefer if the resources in Crumlin were built up," he said. A number of surgeons told The Sunday Business Post that they had seen an increase in the number of parents seeking to send their children overseas for faster treatment.