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A NEW SCHEME funded by the HSE will aim to improve the healthcare and supports offered to homeless people when they present to hospitals for treatment.
It comes as new statistics show that there were over 2,000 cases where homeless people were discharged from Irish hospitals over a seven-year period.
Doctors say that due to the way the stats are calculated, this figure could be far greater while opposition TDs have said the HSE and Department of Health need to roll out effective outreach and after care services for homeless people upon leaving hospitals.
No fixed abode
In a parliamentary question, Minister Simon Harris was asked the number of patient discharges from hospitals in which they were discharged to no fixed address, i.e. homeless.
The query was referred to the HSE, which provided details on the numbers of patients discharged for each year from 2011 to 2017 who provided “no fixed abode” as their area of residence. Data for 2018 is not yet confirmed.
The numbers do not definitively indicate the exact number of homeless people who were discharged from hospital, as the numbers could indicate repeat cases.
The numbers rise over time before plateauing and falling again.
Overall, this adds up to 2,266 patient discharges over this seven-year period where the patient listed their address as no fixed abode when leaving hospital.
The figures were released to Sinn Féin’s health spokesperson Louise O’Reilly. She told TheJournal.ie that health is a significant factor for those who are homeless.
“Health needs have to be addressed in tandem with housing,” she said. “You cannot treat someone’s health needs only to discharge them onto the street, inevitably their problems will recur and escalate because they do not have a roof over their head.”
Pilot scheme
The HSE has already sought to identify the particular challenges facing homeless people when leaving hospital, providing the funding for a pilot project to develop an approach and finalise a protocol that would address the specific needs of such patients.
Dr Clíona Ní Cheallaigh is an infectious diseases and internal medicine physician at St James’s Hospital. This pilot project is being initially rolled out at St James’s and the Mater Hospital in Dublin.
She told TheJournal.ie that official stats in this area do not paint a full picture.
“It’s much higher than that,” Dr Ní Cheallaigh said. “We’d often have cases where someone who is homeless will give an old address. Or you’ll have people giving the hostel they’re in as an address.”
She said that the HSE funding would go some way to create a coordinated method of providing healthcare tailored towards those who are homeless.
The physician said: “People who are homeless can often be really sick, and being homeless can make their illness worse.
It’s basic things. There was one man recently who had cirrhosis. He was staying in a hostel which was closed during the day. He wasn’t taking the tablets he was prescribed because he had no access to a toilet during the day.
Dr Ní Cheallaigh said the pilot scheme was about ensuring that homeless people requiring healthcare are given it in a dignified manner, and offered the right supports when they exit the healthcare system.
“We’ve a multi-disciplinary team,” she said. “We aim to find the right place to discharge them. We meet with those who run the hostels in Merchants’ Quay, and the doctors and nurses they interact with. It’s about everybody talking to each other to try to get the best results we can.”
The physician said such a coordinated response is needed due to the complex and complicated needs that this portion of the population has.
When a person presents in an emergency department who is homeless, the scheme will see them referred to this team where they can put the correct supports in place.
They also provide items such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, shaving cream and razors so that people have the chance to bathe.
“It’s all about treating people they way they should be,” Ní Cheallaigh added. “People may feel ashamed that they are homeless. They may feel ashamed over an addiction, or over abuse they’ve previously suffered.
There hasn’t been a coordinated approach before. There’s been good practice, but it’s just about pulling that together. People are kind. But it’s about creating a system that’s kind. I hope we can roll this out nationwide in the future.
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To be honest it beats the alternative – having fake brands which really take you out of the film. Nothing worse than a movie character cracking open a can just labelled “beer”
Ya, the movie world is filled with mind reading barmen aswell. I’d love to be able to walk into a bar and order a “Beer” and get what I want every time!
Go to some restaurants in Italy and that’s what happens. A two page list of wine with two beers at the bottom called small and large.
The product placements in Wayne’s World were satirical and totally over the top for the sake of comedy, this example doesn’t really fit in with the rest!
If this article is giving you a headache, Rob Hunt, you should take two Nuprin.
Ah, Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Different.
Or you could try JIMPRIN, a generic version that may be even better!
JIMPRIN! Almost made in Ireland!!
James Bond Skyfall with Heinekin and the Sony laptops.
I think the icing on the skyfall sell out cake was…
M:What was that?
Moneypenny: Volkswagen beetles I believe ma’m
I thought for a second she was going to add ‘what I can’t believe is they start from only €16K’
In fairness Bond has a noble heritage of schlepping. In Goldfinger You could have a drinking game out of the amount of times Sean Connery during his golf march wit Aurich Goldfinger says the word Slazenger.
I Lol’d at that
I hate product placement just about as much as I love a nice ice filled glass of Bulmers on a sunny day…
The movie producers and companies are out to make money, yet I think this speaks more to human beings and their desire to want something that they see in a movie, regardless of how useless that thing may be.
Have you seen the Product Placement in Fair City :) woaaaaa
Too true they’re shameless!
Some other company were offered the placement in ‘Castaway’, wouldn’t take it because they thought the plane crash would be bad for business.
The guy who filmed castaway was a former marine who served his time in Vietnam with the CEO of FEDEX.
At the time the board did not want the company to go ahead and feature in the movie but the CEO managed to push it through, , From memory it is the only actual airline ever to have a plane crash.
There’s a fascinating development in product placement. A company called Morris’s have developed technology which allows post production placement.
Essentially this means that anything which as ever been filmed wether yesterday or 50 years ago, can have products placed in it.
They have a showreel which includes a Kellogg’s cereal on the breakfast table of a Cosby show episode which predates the product by about five years.
http://www.mirriad.com/tag/digital-product-placement/
This means placement can be sold in different territories for different products.
There was a recent episode of how I met your mother which featured one of the characters carrying a shopping bag. The space on the bag was sold multiple times (down to zip code level) by individual broadcasters & where it wasn’t sold. It was blank with no disruption to the scene.
The Truman show. A very very very large product ad
What a moany article.
Are you seriously suggesting there should be no name brand products in films? Yeah, that’ll make it more natural.
There was nothing unnatural about any of these products. Imagine, a named car in a film about… Cars?!
Sharon’s stones ” Toothless Grin” in basic instinct
Remember a blatant one for Nike, in Heath Ledger’s ‘A Knights Tale’. Crap film anyway but that plug was shameless.
Nike not capitalizing… While they did only release 1500 (not 1000 fact check anyone?) pairs they also sold them in a bidding process for $3,500-10,000 a piece.
That’s a BMW Z8 from The World Is Not Enough pictured, not the Z3 from Goldeneye.
I am sick to death of the Apple’s product placement. iphone & MACs everywhere. And if the ‘baddie’ in the tv seriesbor movie takes out his phone, it looks like a blackberry.
The most blatant were Cheerios back in the late 70s, the cereal boxes were framed and lit better than the actors
I’m surprised the movie jack and jill with Adam Sandler was left out of this list…. Worst product placements I’ve ever seen. The ones above aren’t too bad… The whole movie was based on trying to get a Dunkin Donuts commercial made.
Because the film was so bad that no one saw it and the placements.
I’m glad no one has seen it. Horrible money grabbing piece of crap.
The picture of Bond was in Azerbaijan in The World is not Enough standing next to the BMW z8 the z3 roadster was in Goldeneye :)
Don’t forget Mac & Me, an entire movie made to promote MacDonalds
don’t get this article?? product placement is all the rage these days to even in lot of tv shows as well, and animated programmes like southpark
Mission impossible in Dubai. BMWs new 1 and 3 series and X5 used alot! Also in up in the air, American Airlines an Hilton are heavily used and advertised but I heard this was for the free use of the hotels and planes
Surely men in black for ray ban has to be there.
The movie Mac & Me should definitely be on that list. It’s an ET rip-off where the alien character spends his time consuming MacDonalds, Skittles and Coca Cola. It even has a 5 minute dance scene in MacDonalds in which Ronald MacDonald joins in on the fun.
Don’t. Forget the subtle method of thejournal.ie to include newstories which are actually adverts…. how dare they provide a free service and try to recoup costs through advertising … don’t forget talkshows like opera and the late late show. I’m also lead to believe that the rte news is sponsored by the sitting government. :)
They’ve nothing on Microsoft, I mean Hawaii, Five O though.
The Miller truck I bad boy’s 2 was so bad just a long dramatic sweeping camera shot of the Miller truck pass in slow motion
In the movie Anger Management, a movie set in NYC that was released shortly after 9/11, you can see several ads for U.S army recruitment.
What about Heineken in skyfall?
Product Placement has been around for years and always will be.
Watched ‘In The Heat Of The Night’ last night and Coca Cola featured prominently, didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the film though and the funding helps get the films made.
Smoking though does bother me, shameless placement in scenes you don’t see anymore, such as people smoking in offices and bars etc and really should be stamped out.
It is easy enough to get any product placement for the goodies in white hats…….try getting some for the the guys in the black hats, sadly the baddies are not really what the advertisers seem to want .
Oh dingleberrycity.com would never bother with product placement.
Transformers, General Motors, Xbox, Nokia, EBay, Burger King amongst others, and numerous references to Michael Bays other films….
Burger King in first Iron Man
The BMW z3 wasn’t in Goldeneye, it was in The World is Not Enough :)
What about Paddy Whiskey in On TheWaterfront?
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