Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

Misdiagnosis is a challenge for health care systems throughout the world and there is no substitute for expert clinical examination. Professor Turner made that point clearly and succinctly to the media only a few weeks ago in a very convincing fashion. There is no substitute for expert clinical evaluation. There are no tests, irrespective of how advanced they are, that are perfect. There are tests and the use of diagnostic technology that have false positives and false negatives - that is a fact. Tests have to be combined with expert clinical examination and expert clinical opinion. When errors are identified or anticipated, particularly in areas where there is a high volume of activity and where the consequences can be very serious, we must have in place fail-safe measures that identify such errors, that enable us to quickly learn from them and to put into effect protocols to avoid them happening again.

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