Category Archives: Medical Recruitment

CAO points for Medicine are up again

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Leaving Cert Students

Leaving Cert Students

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to the Irish Medical Times, the points requirement for undergraduate medicine is up again, following the recent initial round of Central Applications Office offers for third-level courses.

 Trinity is up 10 to 741, the RCSI is also up 10 to 733, UCD is up 13 to 738 and NUI Galway and UCC are up nine points to 729 and 734 respectively.

A big change in course preference has emerged among students. CAO points required for entry to courses in science, technology and agriculture have increased dramatically, as students opt for programmes with better job prospects.

The points needed for courses in arts and business, meanwhile, are in decline, as are places on courses associated with the construction industry.

In contrast, science and computer courses, which have traditionally struggled to attract students, are booming.

The requirement for entry to science at UCD is up again this year to 455.

Five years ago, school-leavers could secure a place on the course with fewer than 300 points.

Recruiting more NCHD’s will reduce overtime bill

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Recruiting NCHD's to reduce overtime bill

Recruiting NCHD's to reduce overtime bill

The HSE will end up with more NCHDs in certain specialties than the number of existing vacancies after it allocates trainee doctors currently being recruited from India and Pakistan, Irish Medical Times exclusively reports.

 

Correspondence seen by IMT reveals that this is as a result of a deliberate plan taken at corporate level and with backing from senior management.

“As part of the allocation of Indian/Pakistani doctors from the centralised recruitment process, an additional number of doctors are being allocated to certain specialties in excess of current vacancies,” states the letter dated July 8.

According to the correspondence, the corporate motivation is to reduce overtime pay or eliminate agency cover, enhance compliance with the European Working Time Directive (EWTD) and improve the quality of services and working lives of doctors.

Some of the country’s largest rural and regional hospitals are set to spend up to 10 times more than the 2005 figure on agency workers to fill staff gaps this year. Despite HSE plans to reduce spending on agency workers, costs continued to rise steadily in the first three months of 2011.

As of July 4, HSE-centralised NCHD recruitment had received 1,791 applications over five rounds from February 28 to June 30, with NCHD vacancies at July 11, the date of the changeover, at 150.

The plan to hire an excess amount of NCHDs has been agreed by the National Directors with the Regional Directors of Operations (RDOs), IMT understands. Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) ceilings will not be an issue in circumstances where there is evidence that significant savings in agency/overtime can be achieved.

In line with the correspondence, sent to some local managers and clinical directors and copied to RDOs, the amount of doctors allocated would be determined by the numbers of new employees arriving from India and Pakistan. At the end of May, the Executive said more than 240 doctors from India and Pakistan had applied for visas and legislation to introduce a new classification of NCHDs has now been passed.

Local hospital management were requested, in the correspondence, to review their overtime/agency expenditure and EWTD compliance by specialty and to advise by last Friday (July 15) if this allocation could be utilised to reduce or eliminate overtime and agency costs or to enhance EWTD compliance.

The HSE expressed appreciation that this additional allocation could potentially involve changes to rosters or changes in cross-specialty cover, which in turn could generate negotiation with staff representatives.

Fine Gael to end Hospital Consultant massive earnings

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Fine Gael Health SpokespersonAccording to the irishhealth.com, Fine Gael’s health spokesperson Dr James Reilly has warned that massive earnings by some hospital consultants would end under the party’s universal health insurance (UHI) plan.

Under both Fine Gael and Labour’s health service plans, everyone in the population would be insured for the same level of health cover and there would be equal access to care in both private and public hospitals for everyone based on medical need alone, with free GP care also being provided for the entire population.

Labour has proposed that €75 million be clawed back from consultant salaries to help pay for free GP care, while Sinn Fein has said consultants’ public salaries should be reduced from the current €180,000 plus to €150,000.

Dr Reilly told a health policy conference in Dublin that the days of consultants taking a large State salary and an even larger private practice payout on top of that, would come to an end under Fine Gael.

“People who are earning €180,000 to €200,000, who have studied for six years to get a good Leaving Cert and then go to medical college for six years, and then train for a further 10 years – I think most people acknowledge that people who have done that have developed an expertise and are entitled to a good income. And I believe €180,000 is a bloody good income.”

“I am saying very clearly that the days of people who think they can take €180,000 out of the State and another €300,000 from the VHI will be over under Fine Gael, because it’s just not sustainable. It may upset some people, but this is a society we live in and no-one can set themselves above the rest of society. We are all taking pain and we will all share in the gain at the other end, and that is the Fine Gael position.”

The conference, attended by representatives of the main political parties, was organised by the Irish Dental Association, Irish Medical Organisation and Irish Pharmacy Union.

Dr Reilly said there was sufficient money being spent on health even with the cutbacks to give us an excellent service. “We just have not been spending the money in the right way.”

He said under the Fine Gael insurance plan healthcare would be run by private operators and there may be some not for profit global insurance operators who might enter the market as well under UHI.

“With the entire community insured we will be doubling the size of the market and that will attract more competition and I believe help control costs.”

Labour’s health spokesperson Jan O’Sullivan told the meeting that we have to reform the health service in order to get better value for money. She said Labour would introduce free GP care at the point of delivery within four years.

She said under Labour’s universal insurance scheme cover would be provided by private health insurers as well as a public health insurer. A public health insurer body would be set up but people would be allowed to keep their private insurance as well.

Both Fine Gael and Labour plan to reinstate the dental scheme for medical card patients, the meeting was told. However, Fine Gael said the funds were not there at the moment to reinstate dental care subsidies for those who pay PRSI, while Labour said it would review the matter.

Fianna Fail health spokesman Barry Andrews said he would challenge Fine Gael to outline what the true cost of universal health insurance would be. He said a couple in the Netherlands in a similar scheme had to pay €5,000 per annum for health cover.

He said he doubted whether the two-tier system would end under UHI , as people would still be able to purchase additional benefits other than those provided under the State-controlled insurance scheme.

Ruadhan MacAodhain of Sinn Fein told the meeting that his party opposed UHI as they saw it as a direct privatisation of the HSE, and the party would limit consultant salaries to €150,000 a year.

Late nights are a ticking time bomb for Health

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Late nights bad for our healthAccording to Irishhealth.com,  people who are often deprived of sleep or have disrupted sleep patterns may be at an increased risk of suffering serious health problems, including heart attacks and stroke, new evidence suggests.

Today’s economy has significant stress, loss of jobs, financial difficulty and this will have an effect on our sleep.

In a new job or in current times, people want to prove themselves and this can lead to working long hours.

Stress and worry for our job searchers can also reduce sleep drastically and leave our job seekers feeling exhausted which can be reflected at interview.

UK researchers looked at studies involving 470,000 people in eight countries, including the UK, Sweden and the US. They found that poor sleep can have serious, long-term health implications.

“If you sleep less than six hours per night and have disturbed sleep, you stand a 48% greater chance of developing or dying from heart disease and a 15% greater chance of developing or dying of a stroke,” explained lead researcher, Prof Francesco Cappuccio, of the University of Warwick.

He said that the current trend for late nights and early mornings ‘is actually a ticking time bomb for our health’ and advised people to ‘act now to reduce the risk of developing these life-threatening conditions’.

“There is an expectation in today’s society to fit more into our lives. The whole work/life balance struggle is causing too many of us to trade in precious sleeping time to ensure we complete all the jobs we believe are expected of us.

“But in doing so, we are significantly increasing the risk of suffering a stroke or developing cardiovascular disease resulting in, for example, heart attacks.”

The study pointed out that chronic short sleep produces hormones and chemicals in the body, which increase the risk of developing heart disease and strokes, as well as other conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes.

However, Prof Cappuccio did warn of the implications of going too far the other way, as sleeping overly long – more than nine hours at a stretch – may also be an indicator of illness, including cardiovascular disease.

“By ensuring you have about seven hours sleep a night, you are protecting your future health and reducing the risk of developing chronic illnesses. The link is clear from our research – get the sleep you need to stay healthy and live longer,” he said.

Details of these findings are published in the European Heart Journal

Our Student Nurses – easy targets for the Government?

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Student Nurses to strike

Student Nurses to strike

Student nurses are threatening to take industrial action in protest at Government moves to cut their pay.

The student nurses’ pay is to be cut and eventually phased out. Students currently get 80% of the minimum rate staff nurse salary during a nine-month placement in hospitals.

Under the pay cut plan, student nurses would see their pay fall cumulatively by 65% up to 2014 and be paid no salary at all from 2015, according to their union, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO)

The INMO said 6,000 student midwives and nurses in training will hold a lunchtime protest in 13 hospitals across the country on February 9.

This will be followed by a march and rally in Dublin on February 16.

The five main political parties are to be lobbied for their views on the planned student pay cuts. Nursing students are also to be balloted on industrial action up to and including strike action.

The INMO said it viewed the pay cut plan as an imposition of ‘slave labour.’

It’s goodbye to our Health Minister

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Mary Harney out

Mary Harney out

According to IrishHealth.com, Mary Harney has brought to an end nearly six-and-a half-years as Health Minister with the announcement of her resignation from the Cabinet.

She offered her resignation to the Taoiseach, which has been accepted, and has announced she will not be standing in the forthcoming general election. It had been speculated for some time that she would not run in the election.

Ms Harney said she offered her resignation to Brian Cowen last week but was told to hold off on making the announcement.

Mary Harney was appointed Health Minister in September 2004. She was previously Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment.

A former Tanaiste, Mary Harney has witnessed the demise of the party she helped found – The Progressive Democrats- while serving as Health Minister.

She is the second longest holder of the health portfolio in the history of the State, but her critics will say that after more than six years, she should have achieved more.

While she has had some limited successes as Minister – the Fair Deal nursing home funding scheme; providing for better regulation of doctors and other health professionals; reducing drug costs to some extent and bringing in doctor visit medical cards, on the big healthcare issues she has essentially failed to deliver.

Early on in her ministry she promised to resolve the ongoing A&E crisis. Years later, emergency department trolley numbers have reached record levels and the Minister continued to offer little in the way of concrete solutions to the ongoing hospital capacity crisis.

The Minister told the Dail last week: “we must become less focused on beds and more focused on activity.”

Despite her exhortation, the rest of the country was extremely focused on beds, and the lack of them. Patients were becoming less focused on beds as more and more of them got used to waiting on trolleys.

As Minister, Mary Harney presided over considerable bed reductions, which took place long before an alternative system aimed at reducing reliance on hospital beds was put in place.

Mary Harney’s plan to increase capacity in the system by decanting private beds from public hospitals into co-located private units failed. Nearly six years after she announced co-location as a quick solution to hospital capacity problems, not one co-located hospital or bed has opened.

The cancer services reorganisation is regarded as a success on Ms Harney’s watch, but much of this success was down to Prof Tom Keane. In any case, the report proposing cancer service reorganisation had lain on a shelf for years and was only activated after a number of breast cancer misdiagnosis scandals emerged during the Harney era.

Other more negative aspects of Ms Harney’s Ministry that will be rembered include:

* Failure to reform the HSE, a structure she effectively inherited from her predecessor, Micheal Martin, but whose establishment was very much in line with her reform-minded PD policy.

* Early in her ministry, the fall-out from the scandal over illegal overcharging by health authorities of public nursing home patients for many years.

* The attempt to take medical cards off thousands of over 70s.

*Frequent expressions of regret over the latest hospital care or misdiagnosis scandal and claims that hospital safety would improve despite her efforts , Mary Harney failed to convince the public that she was making healthcare provision safer.

* ‘Taxing the poor’, by introducing prescription charges. Ireland must be one of the few developed countries where those on the very lowest incomes are charged for treatment,albeit at a low rate.

* Her recent clash with Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, with the Minister insisting that the State was not legally obliged to provide public long-stay care for the elderly.

*Her failure to effectively tackle waiting list numbers, despite the NTPF, and in particular waiting times for outpatient appointments.

*Controversy over her expenditure on business trips abroad as Health Minsiter and in her previous ministry, not to mention her lengthy stay in New Zealand as the Tallaght x-ray crisis unfolded.

So is it goodbye and good riddance or just farewell?

To look beautiful – go to sleep!

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Sleep is the key to beauty!

Sleep is the key to beauty!

To look beautiful – go to sleep!

If you want to look attractive and healthy, the best thing you can do is get a good night’s sleep, the results of a new study indicate.

According to Swedish researchers, their findings mean that for the first time, there is scientific backing for the concept of beauty sleep.

They investigated the relationship between sleep and perceptions of attractiveness and health. They insisted that such research is important in today’s 24-hour society, particularly as the number of people suffering from sleep disorders and disturbed sleep is on the rise.

The study involved 23 people aged between 18 and 31. Each person was photographed between 2pm and 3pm on two occasions, once after normal sleep and once after being deprived of sleep.

Smokers were excluded from the research and no alcohol was allowed for two days prior to the experiment.

The photographs were taken in a well lit room and the distance to the camera was fixed. During both photography sessions, participants wore no make-up, had their hair loose (combed back if they had long hair) and underwent similar cleaning or shaving procedures.

They were asked to have a relaxed, neutral facial expression for both photos.

Sixty-five observers, who were blinded to the sleep status of the participants, rated the photographs for attractiveness and whether the individuals looked healthy/unhealthy or tired/not tired.

According to the researchers from the Karolinska Institute, the observers judged the faces of sleep deprived participants as less healthy, less attractive and more tired.

The team concluded that the facial signals of sleep deprived people affect facial appearance and judgments of attractiveness, health and tiredness.

Details of these findings are published in the British Medical Journal

In summary – who needs to go to the expense of face lifts, Botox or facial Therapy when all you have to do is go to sleep?!

This is also important information for all those Job Seekers out there who are attending interviews – it has been noted the difference between a job seeker turning up for an interview tired and those who get a good nights sleep before their interview.

The Health Benefits of having a pet

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The Health Benefits of having a pet

The Health Benefits of having a pet

For nearly 25 years, research has shown that living with pets provides certain health benefits.

Pets help lower blood pressure and lessen anxiety.

They boost our immunity. They can even help you get dates!

“The old thinking was that if your family had a pet, the children were more likely to become allergic to the pet. And if you came from an allergy-prone family, pets should be avoided,” says researcher James E. Gern, MD, a pediatrician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

However, a growing number of studies have suggested that kids growing up in a home with “furred animals” — whether it’s a pet cat or dog, or on a farm and exposed to large animals — will have less risk of allergies and asthma, he says.

Dogs are great for making love connections. Forget Internet matchmaking — a dog is a natural conversation starter.

This especially helps ease people out of social isolation or shyness, Nadine Kaslow, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University in Atlanta, comments.

“People ask about breed, they watch the dog’s tricks,” Kaslow says. “Sometimes the conversation stays at the ‘dog level,’ sometimes it becomes a real social interchange.”

Studies have shown that Alzheimer’s patients have fewer anxious outbursts if there is an animal in the home,” says Lynette Hart, PhD, associate professor at the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

Pet owners with AIDS are far less likely to suffer from depression than those without pets. “The benefit is especially pronounced when people are strongly attached to their pets,” says researcher Judith Siegel, PhD.

In one study, stockbrokers with high blood pressure who adopted a cat or dog had lower blood pressure readings in stressful situations than did people without pets.

People in stress mode get into a “state of dis-ease,” in which harmful chemicals like cortisol and norepinephrine can negatively affect the immune system, says Blair Justice, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health and author of Who Gets Sick: How Beliefs, Moods, and Thoughts Affect Your Health.

Studies show a link between these chemicals and plaque buildup in arteries, the red flag for heart disease, says Justice.

Like any enjoyable activity, playing with a dog can elevate levels of serotonin and dopamine — nerve transmitters that are known to have pleasurable and calming properties, he reports.

“People take drugs like heroin and cocaine to raise serotonin and dopamine, but the healthy way to do it is to pet your dog, or hug your spouse, watch sunsets, or get around something beautiful in nature,” says Justice, who recently hiked the Colorado Rockies with his wife and two dogs.

Heart attack patients who have pets survive longer than those without, according to several studies. Male pet owners have less sign of heart disease — lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels — than non-owners, researchers say.

In summary, having a pet has definite Health benefits.