Nurses’ strike averted after resources promise

THE threat of a strike

Yesterday, INO industrial relations officer Michael Dineen said his members regretted having to issue the threat of industrial action to improve their working environment.

He stressed that the INO would closely monitor the situation at the A&E department over the next three to four weeks to ensure that there was no recurrence of this week’s crisis when as many as 33 patients were on trollies.

Labour TD Kathleen Lynch described the A&E scenes as bedlam.

Mr Dineen said he was confident that the promise of additional resources, under a current review of the A&E, coupled with close monitoring by the INO would prevent a recurrence of this week’s chaos.

Speaking of the scenes in the department on Wednesday, Ms Lynch said: “I had to weave between people on the corridors to get anywhere. The overspill from the A&E was packing the corridors, it was bedlam.

“There were clearly people in pain, people in distress, elderly people and people in wheelchairs all waiting in the corridor,” she said.

Because the A&E had effectively become an extra hospital ward, the INO demanded additional staff to cope with the situation.

The INO has also demanded a more efficient emergency response in the A&E department.

This week’s crisis comes in the wake of the announcement that 24 beds are being closed on a temporary basis at the hospital amid a worsening health crisis in the SHB region.

Also, every year six beds for ophthalmic procedures in CUH close for two months over the summer to facilitate annual leave. CUH employs more than 2,300 staff and co-ordination of annual leave was a major consideration every year.

With 600 beds, a 2003 budget allocation of €149.78m and an agreed level of service provision for 49,000 patients in 2003, it is one of the busiest hospitals in Ireland.

Nonetheless, despite increasing demands on the hospital’s services, a 24-bed day ward will be closed, without any job losses, from June 23 to September 1.

Elective or planned surgery will be reduced in this 10-week period.