LAST UPDATE | 8 Oct

THE NATIONAL AMBULANCE Service has told the Oireachtas health committee that it is open to the idea of including doctors in its crews when they are called to deal with trauma patients. 

While the management team at the NAS said they were satisfied with the current model, they told the collection of senators and TDs that some of them had made a trip to Scotland to see what could be learned from the system there.  

“We’re very satisfied that the existing model works well,” the HSE’s National Director for Services and Schemes Pat Healy said today, adding that there is always room for improvement. 

Ireland is an outlier in not sending specialist doctors to the scenes of serious accidents alongside paramedics.

Writing in The Journal last year, Dr Brian Burns said that Ireland’s helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) was not up to international standard compared to the UK and Australia, where he works.

A group of pre-hospital medicine specialists has been lobbying the HSE and NAS to try to convince them to send doctors out with ambulance crews. 

They have warned that there are “profound and systemic” failures in pre-hospital care. 

“We had a meeting with them, with the [HSE] CEO, and we agreed that we would look at the crewing model,” Healy said. 

“There’s a view that maybe physicians should be involved in that. We are open to looking at that.”

Healy added that Dr Keith Synnott is now leading an assessment of how a system involving doctors on ambulances and in helicopters might be developed, first of all when it comes to dealing with trauma patients.  

“We will look at that in the first phase,” he said.

Healy also mentioned that members of the management team had visited Scotland to look at the broader picture, “the critical care, the whole aeromedical service”.

“There’s probably learning from what’s been done in Scotland that can be translated here to join that up in a more significant way. So we are intending to deal with that.”

Healy said that the Synnott review will be concluded in the first quarter of 2026, “and I would hope that that would inform our plans for going forward”.

Dignity at work 

The NAS management team was also asked about reports of women suffering harassment while working in ambulance crews. 

In July of this year, The Journal Investigates revealed that there is a toxic culture in the NAS, leading to a sharp rise in complaints alleging inappropriate behaviour and sexual harassment within the service.

NAS director Robert Morton said the service had made some efforts to address the issues, which were raised by Labour TD Marie Sherlock. 

Morton said there has been “a balance change” in terms of the gender of people employed by the NAS and especially among recruits, with more women joining the service. 

He said there are also new training programmes in place. 

Morton added finally that recent dignity at work complaints have been dealt with.

Three of those were related to sexual harassment, one of which led to a dismissal and two to suspensions. 

He said that management has reminded workers “that behaviour will not be tolerated”