Ms Marie Butler:

Deputy Donnelly's original question was what would we do immediately. I would immediately recommend that healthcare assistants be utilised in the emergency departments. Many patients come into hospital and they may only need to be looked after. They may need to be brought to the toilet and their personal needs taken care of. Often they are left sitting on a chair because there is nobody to do that work. While those engaged in diagnostics, clinical work and assessments are under great pressure, much could be done to enhance the patient's experience at that level. That is an under-utilised resource. Healthcare assistants are qualified support grades. They do not get enough recognition for the work they do or could do to alleviate the patients' suffering at that early stage of their journey. Many elderly people end up in accident and emergency departments for no medical reason when they could be taken care of in their own home but, again, there are no resources available.

There are many reports on the gaps in professional services. However, I do not believe we would find a report that would set out the work health support grades do in the community. The nearest we have is the healthcare assistant report which is an independent review of healthcare assistants and the types of work they provide. If we wanted to find what support grades do externally in community care, we would not find an independent report that deals with that. That is a gap. The Sláintecare report refers to moving into the community but healthcare assistants and healthcare support assistants, which were previously known as home helps, are only mentioned twice. That indicates that there is a great deal of emphasis on diagnostics, clinical work and assessments, and rightly so, but there is a major resource that is not being tapped into. I believe the reason is that people do not know what these support staff do. In the absence of independent reports, it is difficult to know what they do.