Patients’ lives ‘at risk due to cost-saving measure’

THE death of the 75-year-old man who bled to death in Monaghan General Hospital is the most tragic example of how patients suffer as a result of reducing nursing numbers as a cost-saving measure, an international expert on the worldwide nursing crisis has claimed.

The health service had failed Patrick Joseph Walsh because they did not have surgical nurses available, said Suzanne Gordan, who penned Nursing Against the odds, a searing indictment of the western world’s policy of reducing nursing numbers as a cost-saving measure.

“Studies carried out in the US and in other countries have shown that when you start cutting nursing positions, patients start suffering from more preventable complications,” said Ms Gordon who will address a conference in Mullingar today organised by the Irish Nurses’ Organisation.

One doctor in Monaghan said that even if staff broke down the theatre doors with a sledge hammer to give Mr Walsh the life-saving treatment he desperately needed it would have been impossible to operate on him without theatre nurses on hand.

There are no theatre nurses in the hospital after 5pm. Neither are these nurses on call out of hours.

Ms Gordon said a co-relation had been established between the number of nurses in a unit, their patient load and whether patients lived or died.

“If a nurse has an average load of four patients and then you add another patient, that patient’s mortality risk is increased by 7%,” she pointed out.

“If her educated eye cannot be on the patient, then she cannot spot the early warning signs of complications that can develop.”

Ms Gordon said people needed to fight to retain their public healthcare system and organisations like the INO had to work harder to win their support.

“Promoting private health care is just a way of giving investors and business people more money. That is not a solution to the healthcare crisis in Ireland. Much needed resources will end up going to them and not to patients.”