Two of the three nurses at the Cervical Check service at University Hospital Waterford have resigned.
All 15 of the doctors who oversee the running of the national service for women requiring further investigation following a smear test are considering resigning.
This follows months of abuse directed at staff working in the 15 clinics nationwide after the CervicalCheck controversy broke.
Dr Nóirín Russell, who is the lead with the Kerry Service, told the Irish Examiner that some senior members of CervicalCheck and the HSE were subjected to highly personalised abuse which is thought to have played a part in the resignation of at least two key staff members.
She said the anger arose because the public and members of the media initially wrongly believed that women had not been told by CervicalCheck that they had cancer.
In fact, the women knew they had cancer, but not that they were part of an audit.
She said there was no forward planning around what the audits meant, how they were conducted, what results should be expected, and how were patients going to be informed of the results.
