Nurses ‘dreading’ festive season chaos in A&E

ACCIDENT and emergency nurses throughout the country are dreading Christmas and the New Year.

“They are dreading the festive season because 2003 has been the worst year ever in their experience,” said SIPTU national nursing official Oliver McDonagh yesterday. Instead of putting more beds into the system, all the major hospitals in Dublin were closing them, he said.

While funds of €5.8 million had helped to process 260 patients the vacated beds were re-occupied just as quickly with new patients, he said.

A&E nurses were extremely frustrated none of the initiatives put forward so far had eased the crisis and they continued to work in overcrowded situations on a daily basis, said Mr McDonagh.

Irish Nursing Organisation general secretary Liam Doran said the New Year would be a critical time for acute hospital services. He said in early January acute hospitals will have to cope with resuming elective surgery and possibly more flu cases.

“In the past, they haven’t and the first few weeks have been frantic altogether,” he said.

Mr Doran said what the Eastern Regional Health Authority had offered would not solve the current situation. “Additional nurses are needed now and we suggested ways that this could be done,” he said.

A number of initiatives have been put forward by the INO including paying nurses in Dublin a weighting allowance and a loyalty bonus to nurses who remained in one of the city’s acute hospitals for 12 months.

However, the Health Service Employment Agency (HSEA) said there were 722 nursing vacancies in the public health system at the end of September - a “significant” 29% decrease from the 1,007 vacancies reported at the end of June.

But Mr Doran said facts spoke louder than any statistics. “There are 34 beds closed at James Connelly Memorial Hospital because they can’t get nurses; there’s 19 beds closed in Beaumont and there’s 20-odd beds closed in the Mater.”

He said the staff problem had also worsened in recent months because Filipino nurses, whose spouses could not work in Ireland, were leaving because they had been offered more attractive conditions overseas.