Nurses warn A&E chaos threatens lives
Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) industrial relations officer Kevin O'Connor said the situation at Tallaght, James Connolly Memorial, Beaumont and the Mater hospitals in Dublin was "dire" and that none of the hospitals had a contingency plan to alleviate the situation.
At lunchtime yesterday, there were about 120 people on trolleys in the four hospitals, including one patient at James Connolly Memorial who had spent eight days on a trolley awaiting admission.
Mr O'Connor said Tallaght Hospital had 32 people on trolleys in the A&E; another 12 people were on trolleys in the holding area; 10 occupied beds in the observation ward and 18 'majors' (serious cases) were in the A&E waiting room awaiting treatment, as well as 28 'minors'.
James Connolly Memorial had 25 patients on trolleys and all scheduled surgery was cancelled yesterday and today.
Staff at Beaumont were under too much pressure to count the numbers on trolleys.
The Mater Hospital attempted to go off call at 12.30 yesterday when it had 23 patients on trolleys, but ambulances continued to arrive because of similar pressures in the city's other A&E units.
Mr O'Connor said nurses were looking at "the second winter of discontent in a row".
"We warned the hospitals last year that we couldn't cope but we are back to the same scenario, except that we have 200 beds less because of summer closures."
He said the situation was compounded by the Department of Health's failure to implement the winter initiative of moving chronically ill patients out of acute hospital beds into nursing homes.
"There is an average of 50-60 such patients in each hospital in Dublin. Because many are high-dependency, nursing homes are reluctant to take them, so the overcrowding continues." He warned that worse was to come with a seasonal increase expected due to a higher level of respiratory illnesses at winter time, influenza and the possibility of the return at any time of the winter vomiting bug.
He said patients were no longer the hospitals' number one priority, that staying within budget was of paramount importance.
The A&E Forum, set up to examine overcrowding problems, was toothless, Mr O'Connor said, and had achieved very little.
