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large hospital at 11pm one night, I observed it was extremely busy.
I mentioned to staff that they were very busy and under severe
pressure, but they told me that it “wasn’t too bad”. Yet there was
still a full waiting room and people on trolleys in corridors. But staff
perceived it wasn’t too bad because it was better than it had been.
During crises, our sense of what is acceptable and normal changes,
our tolerance changes overtime. It’s a normal, understandable,
psychological response.
Similarly, in community settings, we may see the wait time for
aids and appliances or specialised wheelchairs as being ‘not too
bad’, perhaps because it used to be worse. We have now improved.
For example, in 2011, we were routinely measuring hospital waiting
lists out to four years. Now we aim to offer a max of 12 – 15 months
waiting but that is still nowhere near good enough. We now need to
reset our sense of what things should be like because this will aid us
to be powerful advocates for those patients who may not be getting
the service they deserve. We need to reset our tolerances.
We also need to allow ourselves to identify resource deficits and
find a way to express our own dissatisfaction with aspects of the
system without discrediting all the good work of the services and
those who work in them.
VALUES
WHEN the time came to describe the values that I want to be the
hallmark of Irish health services - by the time I complete my time
as DG, I needed to look no further than the values I have observed in
practice by the vast majority of colleagues everywhere I have visited.
Care, Compassion, and Learning are much in evidence. We now need
to ensure that the Organisational culture reflects that reality so that
Trust can be a defining feature of the relationship between the HSE
(or its successor bodies) and the staff who deliver services.
Awards
Finally, I want to mention the Health Service Excellence Awards.
When Rosarii Mannion became our new National Director of HR,
we agreed to look at a way of recognising staff commitment and
innovation
These awards respond to the findings of the recent staff
engagement survey which highlighted the hunger and appetite of
our people to be more involved and to have freedom to innovate.
The awards will demonstrate the real value we place on innovation.
We received 426 entries and they have now been shortlisted to 39
finalists. The judges have tough calls to make but it is always great
to have a “high-class problem” like that. I look forward to the awards
ceremony next month.
Tony O’Brien
Tony O’Brien
Director General of the Health Service Executive.
Building a high quality health service for a healthier Ireland.
CARE COMPASSION TRUST LEARNING
spring 2016 | health matters | 07