Nurses to publish daily overcrowding figures

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation is to start publishing daily figures which will highlight any overcrowding.

According to general secretary Liam Doran, “Ward Watch” will document any additional patients on wards above their standard compliment.

He says the organisation will ring every hospital every day to obtain the figures. They will then be published alongside the existing “trolley watch” figures which tell the public how many people are on trolleys.

The INMO said the two tallies together would result in a combined overall measure of overcrowding.

“The Ward Watch findings will confirm that a number of hospitals are regularly overcrowding their inpatient wards,” the nursing union said.

“This practice compromises the care of all patients on those wards due to an increased risk of cross infection and inadequate staffing while also minimising the dignity and privacy to these patients.”

The INMO said that it remained fundamentally opposed to the placing of additional beds and trolleys above the stated complement on any inpatient ward or unit.

“The new Ward Watch/ Trolley Watch combined measure has therefore been brought forward at the request of our members in the frontline who experience patients being placed in inappropriate locations on an ongoing basis,” it said.