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.