Joint Statement
The outcome from the Stakeholder Process is that all parties who participated up to that point agreed on their common goals. This has been captured in the statement that has come from the last workshop that they engaged in together and is as follows:
We, representatives from the 221+ Patient Support Group, Department of Health, National Screening Service and CervicalCheck have met on multiple occasions in the restoration of trust process. We are working through a future focused, sensitive and empathetic lens for the purpose of restoring the trust of those affected by the events of 2018 in the services provided by the National Screening Service. We have agreed the following based on our discussions:
“It is our wish that every woman and her family who find themselves impacted by cervical cancer will experience access to timely, high quality, evidence-based care. We hope that they will be treated with compassion, understanding and respect by the system and professionals involved in their care.
We recognise the painful past and share a vision of the future. We value the importance of screening for all women in Ireland now and into the future. Dr. Scally’s report captures the experience of women and their families. CervicalCheck is sorry for the harm that was caused to women and their families in the past.
Each and all of us accept this report in full. We acknowledge the measurable examples of all of the recommendations being implemented. We all recognise the importance and value of the patient’s voice in applying a person-centered lens to women’s healthcare. There has been a huge commitment to delivering on Dr. Scally’s recommendations and this has resulted in improvements in screening policy and an increased focus on women’s health.
We have reflected on and discussed the past through its multiple lenses and we are each committed to moving forward from a period of crisis to a stable future of collaboration.
As we move towards the future, we remain committed to engaging with each other in a respectful way under the principle that there is good intent from all involved. Creating pathways towards better communication will help us to talk openly and confidently about things that may arise in the future.
Each of us acknowledge all that has happened, all that has been achieved, all that we have done and we hope that our work together will lead others to follow. We recognise the effectiveness of screening in leading to a reduction in cervical cancer. We are all, as patients, public representatives and healthcare professionals, working towards the WHO strategy for the elimination of cervical cancer and we recognise that this is a collaborative effort between patients and professionals.
