Varadkar invited to join A&E nurses for 12-hour shift

Nurses in the emergency department of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda have invited the Minister for Health Leo Varadkar to join them for one of their 12-hour shifts.

Tomorrow, the nurses will stage a lunchtime protest to highlight their ongoing concerns over the conditions in the department, which frequently has more than 40 people who have been admitted as in-patients, waiting on trolleys for beds.

In the year to July the number of admitted patients who were on trolleys had doubled to 632 from 317, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation.

A number of nurses, who spoke on the basis of anonymity, said the solution to over-crowding and people being nursed on trolleys, “is not brain surgery. We need more beds and more staff.”

The message to the minister is “please make it better because we deserve more. Staff make heroic efforts there every day.”

One nurse said that the thought of going to work brings a sense of “dread and horror with it” because of the stress that people are under, “both patients and staff. Patients are being looked after in very unsafe conditions. One nurse could be looking after 15 patients or maybe more. It is unacceptable.”

“From a human rights’ point of view, there are issues with facilities; there is one shower in the whole department. There is no privacy, nowhere to store your personal items, the conditions are just unacceptable and really the humanity is gone out of the health system,” said one nurse.

“There are officially 12 spaces in ED for adults, and from the day the casualty opened we have never not had just those numbers. It hasn’t been fit for purpose from the time it opened. It has never had the capacity for the numbers,” she added.

The problems have to be fixable and she said, “it is not brain surgery. We need more beds and more staff. Extra beds in the community and the main hospital are absolutely essential because the emergency department is being used as a ward and it is not a ward.”

Another nurse said, “sometimes after work you are crying as you drive home. You are not able to sleep thinking about the poor patients that you have left behind, your head is thumping as you re-live and re-run the last shift.

“Sometimes nurses need to be consoled by their colleagues before they begin another nightmare shift in an over-crowded department. We are professional and put on our best face so the patients and relatives never know the pressure we are under.” The nurses said the minster “should be very proud of us — we are all doing more with less.”

They invited him to spend the day with them — a move supported by Tony Fitzpatrick of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisations.

“The conditions are intolerable for the nurses and for the patients.”

He confirmed there will be a lunch-hour protest at the hospital tomorrow to highlight the situation “which is chaotic and unacceptable.”