Hospital emergency services in crisis

EMERGENCY services at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital are at crisis point with frontline staff struggling to manage patient numbers, it has been claimed.

The concern was raised yesterday by Labour’s health spokesperson Jan O’Sullivan. The Limerick TD said: “With wards closed both in the Regional and St John’s and after hours A&E cases presenting to the regional from across the mid-west, the existing A&E facilities simply cannot provide an acceptable level of care and attention to patients presenting for treatment.”

The crisis within the Emergency Department, she said, was spilling over into patient wards with trolleys and additional beds being squashed into hospital wards creating more problems in terms of patient care and privacy.

“Recommendations from the much-publicised Teamwork report that additional resources in terms of beds, medical assessment units, critical care units and an isolation unit all remained to be fully implemented.”

“It is simply impossible for medical and nursing staff to try and manage an ever-growing demand on their services when, at the same time, ward and bed closures continue to occur both within the Regional and other hospitals such as St John’s, nnis and Nenagh.”

A comment from the HSE was still awaited last evening.