SPECIALIST SURGERY: A consultant surgeon in University College Hospital Galway (UCHG) has resigned three months after taking up his post because he was unable to operate on his patients.
Mr Michael Gilbride, a consultant maxillofacial surgeon, started work at UCHG in April this year.
However, the Western Health Board and hospital management were unable to provide him with the minimum number of operating theatre sessions required to treat his patients (maxillofacial surgery involves the treatment of cleft palate and certain cancers of the head and neck).
The minimum operating time required by a specialist surgeon is three theatre sessions a week.
It is understood that a newly-appointed general surgeon at UCHG is also experiencing difficulty accessing theatre time.
In addition, Mr Hugh Bredin, the senior consultant urologist at the hospital, has confirmed one of three consultant urologists at UCHG was confined to one theatre session a week. It is understood that there have been difficulties providing full theatre access for orthopaedic and plastic surgery.
It is believed Mr Gilbride will take up a consultant appointment at Limerick Regional Hospital next month, where he will join an established maxillofacial surgery unit.
He will be provided with a full staff of non-consultant hospital doctors in his new post, a resource that had not been made available to him at UCHG.
A spokeswoman for the Western Health Board said it had been working to put the necessary resources in place to support the recently appointed surgeons.
"However, against the background of our employment ceiling, increasing specialist and nursing demand for services, this has proved challenging. At all times we work with the consultants to provide a patient-centred service," she said.
Dr Noel Flynn, a consultant anaesthetist and member of the recently disbanded Western Health Board, criticised the fact that new operating theatres and beds in phase two of development works at UCHG were lying idle because of lack of funding.
"The Department of Health has got to realise that UCHG is a supra regional teaching referral centre of the exact same standard as the Dublin hospitals, and yet we get nothing like the budget they get," he said.
Dr Flynn pointed out that a number of new consultants had been appointed at UCHG and new services introduced and he asked how these positions were going to be funded.
He added: "We have extra wards refurbished, beds available and operating theatres not being used, but the National Treatment Purchase Funds list is being done elsewhere. Can somebody explain why our work is being sent elsewhere?"
UCHG received an increase of 2.5 per cent in its budget under the Western Health Board's service plan for 2004.
The Western Health Board was given a 3.6 per cent increase, to €780 million, in this year's budget by the Department of Health.
