‘Extra nurses needed’ for A&E plan
The nurses’ body welcomed the move by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to provide patients with a better care environment but said they would resist any move to use existing A&E staff.
“The people waiting in the lounges will have been deemed as requiring in-patient service so they will no longer be an A&E nurse’s problem,” said INO general secretary Liam Doran.
“The transit lounges will not work, they cannot work and they will not be opened unless there is an additional quota of staff - in-patient nursing staff, not A&E nursing staff,” he insisted.
Mr Doran said the idea of having transit lounges was discussed and agreed at a meeting of the A&E Forum last Wednesday.
But, he said, it was always understood that the people waiting in the lounges would be counted as being on a “trolley” because they would still be waiting for an inpatient bed.
It was also clearly understood at the meeting that the lounges would require additional staff.
Mr Doran welcomed last Friday’s passionate outburst by actor Brendan Gleeson on the Late Late Show. The actor described as “disgusting” the conditions that elderly people had to endure while waiting in A&E.
And yesterday, when the INO counted 314 patients on trolleys, Seamus Moran of Fair City fame said he believed Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary was exactly the type of person who could deal with the A&E crisis.
But Mr Doran, who spent the last four-and-a-half years highlighting the A&E crisis, said he did not think it could be solved by bringing in someone like Mr O’Leary.
While the contribution by public figures like Mr Gleeson was welcome, at the end of the day, the problem could only be solved by the Government committing the money to deal with the capacity issue.
“No one would take on the job unless they had access to guaranteed capital funding over the next five years. The problem cannot be solved without more beds,” he said.
Chair of the HSE’s A&E Task Force, Angela Fitzgerald, said around 16 counties had A&E problems but they were not all the same.
She pointed out that there was €110 million available to the HSE to spend on the care of older people and that would be used to alleviate overcrowding in A&Es.
While she insisted that the lounges would be properly staffed and managed, she refused to rule out using existing A&E nurses.
Emergency medicine consultant Dr Eamonn Brazil said the Mater Hospital in Dublin where he worked would need at least 15 extra community beds every week to take the pressure off the A&E unit.
And, he said, while an admission lounge would help in the short-term, the nurses used to staff it must not be from over-stretched A&E staff.
