Sinn F\u00e9in TD for Dublin South West Se\u00e1n Crowe has written to the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly after Tallaght Hospital\u2019s paediatric unit reopened on Monday without a surgical consultation facility. This means that Tallaght is unable to serve seriously ill or injured children who will have to be diverted to other hospitals as a result.<\/p>\n
Teachta Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last couple of days, I have been contacted by several staff of the Children\u2019s Health Ireland Unit of Tallaght Hospital about their reopening which took place on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the day they were to reopen services after a 5 month closure, they were informed by Zoom call that there was to be no surgical consult staff providing a service to CHI Tallaght as they had withdrawn their services. The staff who contacted me say that this is a result of the surgical consult team being spread across three health campuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has a massive repercussion on the level of service that Tallaght can provide and they can no longer be classified as an emergency department for paediatric medicine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the staff inform me that the plan is to transition Tallaght into an Urgent Care Centre, the building and facilities will not be ready for at least a year and that the treatment pathways and planning needed for such a change has not been started.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe staff who contacted me are very worried about this withdrawal of services from a CHI unit that served 34,458 acutely ill and injured children in 2019 in an area that has experienced consistent population growth in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmbulances could conceivably drive past the gate of Tallaght Hospital carrying a serious ill child to another hospital. Without the necessary surgical personnel, there is a very real danger that the Tallaght Children\u2019s Emergency Department will become a watered down, glorified bandages and bruises clinic that would be of no benefit to seriously ill or sick children in its large catchment area.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have written to the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly to stress the importance of CHI Tallaght having a full surgical consultation facility to enable them to continue to treat seriously ill and injured children. It is a vital resource in the area that must be maintained.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sinn F\u00e9in TD for Dublin South West Se\u00e1n Crowe has written to the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly after Tallaght Hospital\u2019s paediatric unit reopened on Monday without a surgical consultation facility. This means that Tallaght is unable to serve seriously ill or injured children who will have to be diverted to other hospitals as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4287"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4290,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4287\/revisions\/4290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}