MY QUESTION FOR HOSPITAL POLLSTERS

IT takes a special kind of brass neck to organise a survey on how people feel about the treatment they have received in our 40 acute hospitals nationwide.

If the HSE, the hospitals watchdog HIQA and the Department of Health are so determined to waste public money then what about a survey on the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer the gross indignities of hospital emergency departments on a day-in, day-out basis?

The disaster that is the HSE doesn’t really want to hear about the trauma and heartache that is the staple diet in our emergency departments. The worry, exhaustion, structured and wilful abuse by neglect that is meted out to people before ever getting into a hospital bed is what needs to be surveyed.

Clearly, they won’t ask questions because they already know they’ll hate the answers.