Dr. Gerard Sheehan:

I fully agree with Senator Conway-Walsh. The behaviour she described is an unacceptable. At the heart of what good medicine is about is talking to patients, listening to them, gathering history, carrying out appropriate examinations and tests and then making one's best effort to arrive at a diagnosis and treatment. All of that takes time. One has to put patients at the centre of everything and one has to listen to them. Even if the ideas that come out of engagement with the patient do not necessarily make sense, one has to engage in a dialogue and to see about setting up a plan that gets them better. In terms of making engagement with the patient better, it is essentially the ongoing business of medical education to educate and train students and junior doctors to the best standards.