150 patients on trolleys and chairs as hospitals face overcrowding crisis

MORE than 150 patients, many elderly, were confined to trolleys and chairs yesterday as Dublin hospitals struggled to cope with an overcrowding crisis.

A snap survey of the capital’s large acute hospitals by the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) revealed that 39 patients were on trolleys or chairs awaiting admission to Beaumont Hospital, including 10 people over 80 years of age. The situation was particularly serious at Naas Hospital where 45 patients were on trolleys and chairs in the new A&E unit.

INO industrial relations officer Phil Ní Shéaghdha said the hospital had requested from the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA) to go off call, but this had been denied because of serious difficulties in other A&Es.

At James Connolly Memorial in Blanchardstown, eight patients awaited admission in prefabs while a new hospital complex remains closed due to the Department of Health’s failure to sanction the employment of additional staff.

The ERHA said the INO A&E figures were from early yesterday morning, before consultants went on discharge rounds and that pressure had eased during the day. The authority said it was continually monitoring the situation and that the hospitals were supporting each other to manage the situation.

However, the INO said the situation was so bad that the usual inter-hospital ambulance cover, which would normally relieve one hospital in particular difficulty, was not available as all hospitals had severe overcrowding. In an effort to diffuse the crisis, the ERHA reiterated its appeal to the public to keep hospital emergency departments for emergencies and to attend GPs for less serious health problems.

An ERHA spokesperson blamed the overcrowding on the busy post-Christmas period.

The INO said the crisis was unacceptable in light of pre-Christmas commitments from both ERHA and hospital management actively to manage the situation to avoid these difficulties in the first week of the New Year.

“In addition, notwithstanding the problem of shortage of nurses having been identified in the weeks leading up to Christmas, the INO cannot discern any sense of urgency about recruiting additional nurses to allow closed beds in some of these hospitals to be opened. An example of this is that 17 beds remain closed in Beaumont Hospital because they are short nurses,” said INO general secretary Liam Doran.

Mr Doran said the core issue causing the overcrowding continued to be the lack of acute beds. The Government’s Health Strategy stated 3,000 additional acute beds were needed but no additional acute beds are planned for 2004.