‘Patients’ lives at risk over cutbacks’

DOCTORS and nurses have warned patients’ lives are being placed at risk as a result of Government cutbacks including a Health Service Executive embargo on recruiting healthcare staff.

The Irish Medical Organisation and the Irish Nurses’ Organisation said it was unacceptable that medical workers and patients were being placed in “an unsafe care environment” as a result of the moratorium introduced in March on recruitment and promotions.

Leaders of both representative bodies said the staging of an unprecedented joint IMO/INO press conference in Dublin yesterday was to alert the public to deteriorating frontline services which would result from such cutbacks.

They also warned there were insufficient facilities and staff within hospitals to deal with any major crisis such as a potential widespread outbreak of swine flu.

“We simply do not have the capacity to deal with these type of emergencies. We are now reaping the results of failing to invest,” said IMO vice president Prof Sean Tierney.

Nurses will soon start documenting all incidents where the care of patients had been compromised in an effort “to embarrass and challenge” the HSE, said INO general secretary Liam Doran.

Both organisations also criticised the Government’s persistence with its controversial plans for co-locating new private facilities on the grounds of existing public hospitals, as well as a reconfiguration of services in the north-east and mid-west without providing adequate facilities at the main regional hospitals in Drogheda and Limerick to cope with the extra demand.

They warned the daily average of 340 patients on trolleys was likely to worsen unless greater funding was made available.

Individual doctors and nurses also recounted their own experience of cutbacks in hospitals, care centres and community health services which included heating being turned off at night at a nursing home in Co Kerry.

Sheila Dickson, a senior staff nurse at St Columbanus Home in Killarney, said that the central heating had recently been turned off in the centre without any explanation, leaving many residents feeling very cold.

“This is how vulnerable people are suffering and it is only the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

Both organisations also warned the high rate of turnover among frontline healthcare workers who weren’t being replaced was already placing a great strain on remaining staff.

Both organisations called on the HSE to engage with their representatives to better target potential savings within the health service.