Protesting nurses hit out at A&E workload

NURSES at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital, who are staging a lunchtime stoppage tomorrow due to emergency department overcrowding&, said cases have spiralled to 1,156 over the past six months, compared to 831 for the same period last year.

The HSE has introduced a new system where patients are moved to wards when the accident department begins to clog up with patients on trolleys. The INO say the arrangement is putting an extra workload on nurses in other wards.

They also claim the system was put in place without consultation and attribute the rise in patient numbers at emergency departments to the downgrading of such services at Nenagh and Ennis hospitals.