Patients could face weeks of overcrowding at Cork hospitals

Patients could face weeks of overcrowding at Cork hospitals unless there is a significant increase in staffing levels, nurses have warned.

A crunch meeting between INMO representatives in Cork and senior management from CUH and the South South-West Hospital Group has aimed to resolve the issues that have resulted in record overcrowding at the hospitals in recent days.

It followed a similar meeting, which took place on Sunday.

Liam Conway, INMO representative, said that an agreement is in place to source extra beds from private hospitals and nursing homes to ease the pressure but that issues are being exacerbated by a significant number of delayed discharges, a situation which has emerged due to an absence of appropriate community care facilities and other beds.

"We will see the overcrowding continuing in the coming weeks," Mr Conway said.

The numbers on trolleys declined from a record high of 760 on Monday and Tuesday to 621 on Wednesday. This included 43 patients on trolleys at CUH and 16 at the Mercy University Hospital.

Despite the decline, though, nursing staff remain very critical of the conditions.

Mr Conway said there are major "health and safety issues" in the Cork hospitals.

"The discharge rate simply is not as high as it needs to be," he said.

From our point of view, we cannot support additional beds without sanctioning extra staff. It would be unsafe to allocate the beds without more staff.

"It is continuous pressure because of staffing shortages and the lack of agency staff; the emergency departments are under-staffed and overcrowded. These are very challenging conditions for staff."

Meanwhile, the HSE's National Service Plan for 2020 is in the firing line once again as it does not allocate extra funding for University Hospital Kerry. Fianna Fáil TD John Brassil said the conditions at the hospital will worsen without additional beds and funding.

UHK had 23 people on trolleys today. The figure has increased as the week progressed, unlike many of the other badly affected hospitals.

Mr Brassil said: "Time and again we see that the worst-hit hospitals, when it comes to the trolley crisis, are all outside of Dublin. Limerick, Cork and South Tipperary hospitals are continuously placed among the worst hit, they are bursting at the seams and this is having a knock-on effect on UHK.

"Yet while all the major hospitals in the South South-West Hospital Group have received project funding under the service plan, UHK has been skipped over."