Sometimes being a patient truly is a virtue

Date Published: {J}

Every time RTÉ in particular has a story about health – be it patients on trolleys, the cost of treatment, availability of surgery or whatever – they inevitably turn for comment to an admittedly eloquent man called Stephen McMahon, head of the Irish Patients Association.And that always gets me wondering about an organisation called the Irish Patients Association.

For example, how do you join; how ill would you have to have been to qualify? If you were once a patient, are you a patient forever? Would you have to have spent a night in a hospital to make the grade as a patient or would a sprained ankle get you in?

Where do they meet – and if you’re sick and unable to turn up for the meeting, is that seen as a massively positive thing in the circumstances?

How much does it cost to join? And can you too stand for election to the Association’s executive so that you too can talk to RTÉ about the crisis in our health sector?

Can you be thrown out because you haven’t visited your doctor in the last twelve months? Can you be too healthy to qualify as a patient?Mostly I wonder what sort of membership would the Irish Patients Association have and how representative would it be of people who’ve been to hospital – perhaps there are thousands of members but I’ve never met one.

Hospital is enough of a trauma without joining some sort of past-pupils union afterwards so that you will forever more be intrinsically linking to those dark days when you had your hip replaced or a stent insertéd to regularise your heartbeat.

Most of us wouldn’t even visit patients in hospital only we have to, such is our overwhelming desire to steer clear of the place – and that’s no reflection on the staff who are on hand to do Trojan work every time we need them.

So it is indeed comforting to know that there exists in our midst a man who is prepared to represent patients forever, providing expert analysis and reaction for RTÉ whenever the need arises.

And it’s great that someone is so motivated that he wants to stand up for patients every time the need arises; part of the problem there, though, is that most patients find they have to stand up for themselves as well because half of our hospitals have closed off the spare beds that would facilitate a lie-down.

We have representative bodies for doctors, nurses and other hospital staff – so why not an association for those who are on the receiving end of their skills too? Surely a sponsorship by a major health insurance company is only a small step away.

But it’s a thankless job too because just when you think you’re getting to grips with the problem, along comes another patient and the numbers just grow again. Worse of all are the impatient patients who refuse to take no for an answer.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.