'Tuesday will be a bad day to die in Waterford' - UHW will use UK pathologists for autopsies
The main concern is that families would face delays on having their loved ones’ bodies returned to them. Photo: Joe Evans
The Waterford News & Star reported earlier this month that coroner-requested autopsies would no longer be carried out in University Hospital Waterford (UHW).
Now, it is understood that UK pathologists will be carrying out autopsies in UHW on a Monday, Tuesday and Friday.
“This is a disimprovement of our current level of service,” according to Waterford coroner John Goff. Autopsies are currently carried out seven days per week in UHW, this is higher than the national average of five days per week.
UHW currently performs around 700 autopsies per year and serves the South East region, including Waterford, Tipperary, Kilkenny, and Wexford.
The main concern about this change was that families would face delays on having their loved ones’ bodies returned to them.
Coroner-requested autopsies usually happen when the death was unusual or unexpected; often, these deaths occur under tragic circumstances.
TD Micheal Murphy told Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan: “Behind every one of these cases is a family in shock waiting for answers and waiting simply to lay a loved one to rest.”
Minister Callaghan agreed with Deputy Murphy saying: “One of the things we do very well in this country is death and it is not something that we want to change by having a big gap between death and a funeral.”
With just a couple weeks until UHW will cease carrying out coroner-directed autopsies, Minister O’Callaghan told Deputy Micheal Murphy: “The local pathologist services with which the department is engaging will be contracted to provide a service from pathologists not already providing services in Ireland. In practice, this will be from the UK."
Deputy Murphy told the Waterford News & Star that families facing delays is "intolerable in the modern health and justice system."
In a statement to the Waterford News & Star, the HSE claimed that there is a global shortage of appropriately qualified pathologists willing to provide autopsy services.
Mr Goff told the Waterford News & Star that his assistant commented on the new arrangement: “Tuesday will be a bad day to die in Waterford.”
Ultimately, though, Mr Goff has “an open mind about it”.
