Hospitals blasé about A&E crisis, says INO

NURSES’ leader Liam Doran has accused hospital management of responding to A&E crises only when the media highlights chaotic overcrowding.

Mr Doran, general secretary of the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO), said the firefighting approach adopted by most hospital managers, reacting only in extreme overcrowding situations, was doing nothing to alleviate daily difficulties besetting A&E departments.

“The reality is overcrowding has now become the norm and it only becomes noteworthy when it goes to a certain level of overcrowding and the media shines the spotlight.”

Mr Doran said the most recently highlighted case, that of an elderly woman who spent five days on a trolley in the Mater Hospital, surrounded, according to her nephew, by “a transient collection of drugs and drug addicts,” was “the normal picture”.

Henry Hudson, from Raheny, Co Dublin, who highlighted his aunt’s treatment on RTÉ’s Gerry Ryan Show yesterday, said other patients included an elderly couple “perched on two plastic chairs, the man connected to a drip and obviously very ill and weak” whose wife was left with the task of keeping him awake and upright.

Mr Doran said the situation in the Mater and similar situations in other hospitals around the country would continue as long as managers took a reactive rather than a pro-active approach to dealing with A&E problems.

“It’s the type of plight many people have to endure on a daily basis. Staff struggle to cope and periodically, when things get really bad, the media gets involved and we get a massive reaction from management. It lasts until the controversy dies down and then it’s back to all the old problems.”

The INO chief said senior hospital managers and not middle management needed to address the daily difficulties.

“They need to turn their attention from devising strategies for the future of the hospital to actually managing it. There is no easy solution, but there could be a vast improvement. Middle management won’t deliver. Their approach is blasé and they just muddle through.”

Mr Doran said the A&E crisis would never abate as long as bed shortages continued. He said there were still 100 beds closed in Dublin which needed to be re-opened.

A&E consultant Dr Stephen Cusack, who is based at Cork University Hospital (CUH), also called for extra hospital beds. He said staff at CUH were dealing with overcrowding every day.

“We are endlessly attempting to address overcrowding. At the moment we are dealing with a chronic situation. We have patients awaiting admission every morning. Four weeks ago we had 30 patients on trollies awaiting admission.”