Agere Contra

national | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis Saturday April 14, 2007 14:24 by Sean Crudden - impero sean at impero dot iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 087 9739945

Conflict or Understanding?

What is wrong in the health services? Is it a question of money and working hours? Perhaps it is the quality of the work professionals are expected to implement? Is a more research orientated outlook important for all nurses and doctors? Is it any longer possible to have blind faith in the administrators or, even, in the stock nostrums of medicine?

Sean Crudden

In the early 60’s when I was a clerical student in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, the then junior dean, Rev Dr Thomas Finnegan, used often give talks or homilies from the pulpit in the chapel on the theme "agere contra." My understanding of what he was saying was that one should "go against" oneself in matters like sex or tobacco and, indeed, not long afterwards, I gave up the struggle and left the cloisters for what turned out for me to be the wilderness of vocational education.

It should be said that Dr Finnegan himself was the picture of composure and satisfaction with his station in life and he gave no impression whatsoever of inner turmoil or struggle. If he is alive today he is approximately 81 and, I think, he retired as Bishop of Killala in 2002 having been appointed to that post in 1987.

I once heard the late Tommy Quinn say to a player on the Hunterstown Rovers team (in the 1970’s) "You should be like Crudden. He hates the opposition." Although I never was much of a footballer I was chuffed to overhear the remark because it, at least, lauded my attitude.

It seems to me to be a natural instinct in the best of people to go against the grain, to fight against an enemy. Of course it is a characteristic of the worst of people also - they seem always to want to have a bete noir - some kind of easy prey that they can scapegoat and seek to destroy. For example, at the present time, the nurses, consultants and the medical council seem to be a target for the strategists in the Department of Health.

In an interesting article "Mutual distrust behind problems in health service" in this morning’s Irish Times, Ray Kinsella advances the thesis that a culture of confrontation has blighted the State’s interaction with the health professions.

He writes

"The State needs to acknowledge that professionals on whose skills and commitment they routinely depend upon in their own lives, can be trusted to manage their own affairs and look out for the interests of patients."

Is he being rather sanguine here? There is many a mental patient who, if s/he has any energy left, resents and distrusts the treatment being dished out routinely in our hospitals and clinics. Frequently the human relations with medical staff are dire and the transactional analysis is execrable.

Personally my regard for a psychiatric nurse is not measured by the salary s/he commands. What I respect in anyone is the ability to use their own intelligence and critical faculties and to do their work in an observant way with their eyes open.