A&E report must make proposals, says consultant

INSPECTIONS of hospital A&E units will be pointless if the Health and Safety Authority doesn’t make any significant recommendations to improve conditions, a consultant said yesterday.

The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) will examine 11 A&E units nationwide from next week. However, Beaumont Hospital A&E consultant, Dr Aidan Gleeson, said: “The main concern of A&E consultants is that these inspectors will say, as they said in the past, that they can appreciate our difficulties, but under current legislation they are not in a position to make any recommendations.”

He admitted there were occasions when A&E departments were unsafe and times when nurses were pushed beyond their limits because they simply had too many patients to look after.

While the HSA’s main brief is to look after the health and safety of workers, it does have an obligation to protect patients attending a workplace like a hospital, Dr Gleeson told RTÉ.

He said a HSA inspector admitted it would have the authority to shut down a building site if scaffolding was in danger of falling on a member of the public because it would be unsafe.

The HSA has the power to issue improvement notices to hospitals and shut down the A&E if the hospital fails to remove hazards after a series of warnings.

Dr Gleeson also said the €10 million funding allocated by Health Minister Mary Harney under the Government’s 10-point plan to tackle the A&E crisis was wholly inadequate. He said Beaumont Hospital alone needed €17.5m for its medical assessment unit.

The Health Services Executive Authority deputy chief executive Pat McLoughlin said a significant amount of work could be done by reorganising hospital facilities like improving co-ordination with GPs and prioritising access to laboratories and radiology.

However, Dr Gleeson said sending more patients to GPs would not solve the A&E crisis because a significant number of patients will still need medical care.

On the question of safety, Mr McLoughlin, who is also head of the National Hospital’s Office, said: “We welcome the HSA involvement because they can determine objectively whether or not there has been a proper assessment of risk.”

The Irish Nurses Organisation welcomed the inspection of the 11 A&E units but it wants them carried out without warning and to include a clinical risk assessment. “We want them to be aggressive about this and to come at 8am and 2am and not at 2pm when the problem is not as bad,” said general secretary Liam Doran.