Opinion: Is Gloster the game-changer for UHL?

ON READING the report in the Sunday Independent of the unfolding events at University Hospital Limerick from the moment teenager Aoife Johnston arrived at the hospital’s ED to the time of her death, an avalanche of emotions swept over this writer and many others as we all try to get our heads around how a 16-year-old girl could pass away under such circumstances in our city’s hospital.

Extreme anger, aching sadness, and even a feeling of being physically ill are just some of the emotions and reactions that the review into Aoife Johnson's death has triggered.

And that is the case for people who didn’t even know the schoolgirl. What a living nightmare her family must be enduring.

One line in particular quoted in the article, from the review, pierces through the heart of the reader.

It states: “Aoife’s father said he gave a ‘roar of distress’, pleading for his child to be assessed by a doctor”.

Its starkness demands action.

The man with probably the most difficult job in the country, Bernard Gloster - a native of Kildimo - took up the position of chief executive of the HSE in March.

HSE chief launches new investigation into tragic death of Aoife Johnston at UHL

On Monday of this week Mr Gloster announced that he had appointed the former chief justice Mr Justice Frank Clarke (retired) to conduct “a formal investigation into all of these matters, to make findings and to report to me”.

And, on Wednesday of last week, it was announced that he had appointed Sandra Broderick to take up the new role as regional executive officer of the new HSE Mid West health region from Monday of this week.

The Hospital Group CEO, the Community Health Organisation’s chief officer and the director of Public Health will report directly to her, and she will report directly to the HSE’s CEO, Mr Gloster.

He is quoted as saying: “I have considered it is necessary at this time to proceed ahead of the changes in other regions and to make this intervention in the Mid -West”.

The scale of the challenge to fix the situation at UHL looms large over Mr Gloster and Ms Broderick.

They face a mammoth battle - solving governance problems, rebuilding shattered trust, addressing operational flaws, retaining staff and, most importantly, ensuring patient welfare.

If there is anything good at all to come out of Aoife’s tragic death, maybe it’s that the plaster is, for once and for all, pulled off the gaping wound that is UHL and the major life-saving surgery that it so desperately requires will happen with much greater urgency.