A RETIRED consultant with almost 30 years experience has slated "disgraceful" bureaucracy clogging a workforce appeal that has prevented him returning to the frontline during unprecedented pressures.
Dr Peter Maguire (53), an anaesthetist who spent much of his career in Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry, Co Down, has revealed he applied to the "urgent" return to work scheme on the day of its launch in September by Health Minister Robin Swann.
The initiative specifically targeted surgeons, anaesthetists and theatre nurses who had recently left their jobs, asking them to come back and help maintain non-Covid surgery services during winter.
Since his application, the Newry consultant has received "three holding emails" in which he was thanked for "his patience" and told he would receive a phone call. He has yet to be contacted.
As the health service braces itself for one of the most difficult periods in the pandemic with a predicted surge in Omicron cases and hospitalisations, Dr Maguire hit out at the red tape at a time of soaring NHS sickness rates and unfilled posts.
The experienced consultant quit the Southern trust in 2019 but has been doing agency work in the Republic where he has cared for ventilated coronavirus patients.
"Here you have a doctor who's fresh, ready for action and someone in an office hasn't done their administrative job. I am one of the people who has applied and would be ideal for the return to work," Dr Maguire said.
"At a bare minimum, someone like me could be in running a vaccination centre because I'm also fully trained in cardiac life support and anaphylaxis. I could be doing that today and yet because of incompetence and poor management, here we are."
Sources have told The Irish News that concerns about bureaucracy impacting on highly skilled healthcare professionals returning have been raised "at the highest level" with the Department of Health in recent weeks.
Dr Maguire said that while he understood screening such as Access NI checks has to be carried out, it "shouldn't take three months in a crisis".
He also criticised the spend on agency staff - £10m was spent in the Belfast trust in a single month due to shortages - and said he could "literally name his price" but chose not to do so.
"The workforce appeal applications should be processed so that qualified people can return to work and ease the burden on health service. The question is what are these people doing," he added.
"I left the Southern trust in March 2019. I took early retirement and continued to do some work in the Republic. Most of the work I was doing was theatre work to keep my hand in. I also did quite a bit of teaching in cardiac life support and paediatric life support.
"I absolutely love my work. I love my patients and to a degree there is a civic duty to look after the sick. At the moment we are in a crisis and staff are burnt out.
"I believe there is a need for respite and to give them a bit of a break. There are doctors like myself who have a skill set, are competent, capable and ready to work. The fact that people are not doing their jobs by even telephoning to make the initial enquiries is shocking while the levels of bureaucracy are disgraceful.
"It's important that the groundwork is done so that retired doctors are ready to roll.
"When I worked in Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry I worked almost every Christmas and New Year because I don't have a family and I always believed it would be good to give others time with their family."
Dr Maguire also revealed his face was left paralysed for months after he contracted Covid last August.
"I got Covid and did not know I had it. Then on November 15, I woke up with a completely paralysed face. I thought I had a stroke but it was actually Bells Palsy," he said.
"It took me four months to recover from the palsy which was caused as a result of Covid. So I'm a frontline person who knows about it. Of that time, I had four weeks of solitary confinement because I had such a high dose of steroids to try to get myself back.
"I've been through the mill with this but I've made a really good recovery and I'm literally ready to go."
The Irish News asked the Department of Health to comment on the concerns raised by Dr Maguire and to detail the number of applications approved for doctors - and how many are delayed.
A spokesman said: "Of the 927 applications that have been lodged via the Appeal to date, 347 (37 per cent) applicants are for clinical posts. This includes 33 applications for medical roles, 73 for nursing and 16 for pharmacy in total. Trusts are working through applications to ensure individuals are appointed to posts as quickly as possible."
