The Medical Council had identified a number of concerns pertaining to interns working at Letterkenny University Hospital (LUH).
While LUH fully or partly complied with some of the standards set down, the Medical Council team have highlighted a number of areas of concern.
The Medial Council team met with over a dozen interns at the hospital.
There are a total of 18 interns in LUH.
The Team was concerned with reports of 9nterns participating in end-of-life care without supports in place and has recommended that supports for interns participating in end-of-life care must be put in place.
Trainers expressed concerns over the lack of support and time given to them to provide teaching within LUH, leading to lack of informal feedback being provided to interns.
Three trainees met with the Medical Council team and explained that they had not been assigned a trainer since January 2017.
It was also noted that teams are very busy and on occasion it can be difficult to find the time to meet with supervisors. Reports of such vary across specialties.
Introduction of the new ward-based rota system has led to difficulty in communication as sometimes a trainee may be working across two teams.
It was reported that not all Trainees are made aware of who their clinical supervisor is and it was also reported that a trainer was not aware that they had a trainee.
In the absence of more senior staff, trainees reported having to act ‘above grade’ as they were the only professional available to do so.
During the visit, trainees indicated that specialty-specific induction is either informal or not taking place at all. One trainee explained that they themselves had provided induction to three doctors who only previously trained outside of Ireland.
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