Publications by authors named "S MacHale"
People with severe mental health difficulties (SMHDs) often have poorer access to kidney healthcare. To better understand the barriers and facilitators to kidney healthcare for this population, we conducted interviews with nine individuals with SMHDs and four family members. Through reflexive thematic analysis, we generated three themes: (1) '' describes the need for individualised kidney healthcare, adapted to meet the specific needs of each person with a SMHD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Minimum unit pricing (MUP) was recently introduced in Ireland to reduce alcohol-related harms. The size of the impact of alcohol on hospital emergency departments (EDs) in Ireland is poorly understood due to inconsistent alcohol screening and documentation.
Aims: We sought to systematically characterise the volume, timing, and nature of alcohol-related presentations and admissions to a busy urban ED in Dublin, Ireland.
Objective: To determine the impact of minimum unit pricing (MUP) on the primary outcome of alcohol-related hospitalisation, and secondary outcomes of length of stay, hospital mortality and alcohol-related liver disease in hospital.
Design: Databases MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, APA Psycinfo, CINAHL Plus and Cochrane Reviews were searched from 1 January 2011 to 11 November 2022. Inclusion criteria were studies evaluating the impact of minimum pricing policies, and we excluded non-minimum pricing policies or studies without alcohol-related hospital outcomes.
Article Synopsis
- - In 2018, Ireland saw over 12,000 emergency department visits for self-harm, with half occurring late at night; a national program was initiated to standardize assessment and management in these cases.
- - A study comparing the diagnosis and management of psychiatric referrals at Beaumont Hospital ED from 2018 to 2020 revealed that alcohol-related disorders were diagnosed more during normal hours, while personality disorders were more common during off hours.
- - The research highlighted a significant difference in referral rates to voluntary services, indicating that these resources are underutilized outside of regular hours, suggesting a need for better training and awareness among clinicians.
Objectives: To examine the impact of the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated restrictions on the volume and nature of psychiatric presentations to an emergency department (ED) in a large academic hospital.
Methods: Anonymised clinical data on psychiatric presentations to the ED were collected for the 52-week period from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and compared with corresponding 1 year periods in 2019 and 2018.
Results: There was a significant increase in psychiatric presentations overall to the ED during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to previous years, in contrast to a reduction in total presentations for all other specialties.