Postcard drive to highlight A&E crisis

NURSES are planning to flood the office of Health Minister Mary Harney with thousands of postcards from people angry at conditions in hospital A&E units throughout the country.

The Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) has produced an initial print run of 100,000 postcards highlighting the continuing severe levels of overcrowding in A&E departments.

Yesterday, the INO produced analysis of their trolley watch figures, showing an average increase of 24% in the number of patients awaiting beds in casualty departments last year.

INO general secretary Liam Doran said the figures confirmed that Ms Harney's 10-point plan had not addressed the overcrowding problem and that both the Government and the Health Service Executive (HSE) continued to be in denial about the severity of the problem.

The postcards are part of the INO's ongoing Enough is Enough Campaign. The INO intends distributing the postcards as widely as possible and will arrange for further print runs as necessary. The postcard is also available on www.ino.ie.

Mr Doran said: & "The postcards, which will be circulated nationwide, can be returned freepost to the INO and we will forward them onto the Tánaiste. This allows patients, their relatives and friends and the general public to send their message directly to the minister."

The INO has also rejected last week's HSE statement that the A&E situation had significantly improved.

Mr Doran pointed to the human misery late last week in Letterkenny and Cavan General Hospitals and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda where record levels of overcrowding were experienced.

He also said an INO survey showed that 514 beds remained closed or out of use.

The HSE, however, later issued a statement refuting the INO's bed closure figures.

Of the 514 beds the INO claimed were closed, 100 were in the Leas Cross nursing home in Swords, Co Dublin, a private nursing home closed for patient safety reasons last year, and a further 66 were in another private nursing home.

The HSE said it was also wrong for the INO to say there were 56 bed closures in Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown, Co Dublin. No beds were closed there, it said.

And the HSE said the remaining bed closures listed by the INO were not acute beds.