Survivors of road collisions are going abroad for vital rehabilitation to avoid waiting lists of up to 10 months, as doctors call for urgent investment in rehab services here.<\/p>\n
The Government has been urged to treat road injuries as \u201ca major public health issue\u201d amid concerns that survivors are not receiving the treatment they require.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I got a brain injury in the morning from a road traffic collision, I\u2019d wait for five months inside Cork University Hospital until I got access to the National Rehabilitation Hospital,” one consultant told the Irish Examiner.<\/p>\n
The Irish Association of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (IAPRM) said thousands of people each year survive road traffic collisions, but they are left with life-changing injuries that require specialist care.<\/p>\n
Dr John MacFarlane, the association’s president and a consultant in rehabilitation medicine at Cork University Hospital and Mercy University Hospital, said patients are grappling with \u201clarge gaps\u201d in care.<\/p>\n
In addition to delays in brain injury care, spinal cord patients can wait two to three months to access the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dublin.<\/p>\n
\u201cPatients are awaiting rehabilitation, sitting in acute hospital beds, and not getting the optimum treatment,\u201d Dr MacFarlene said.<\/p>\n
The National Rehabilitation Hospital is the only HSE centre providing the top level of specialist care, which means patients from Kerry to Donegal essentially compete for its beds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Survivors of road collisions are going abroad for vital rehabilitation to avoid waiting lists of up to 10…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2476,1523,103,61,60,2673,385,1650],"class_list":["post-473070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-breaking-news","tag-government","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-news","tag-latest-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}