Strikes will not improve our hospitals - Nurses’ industrial action

IT IS hard to imagine how work stoppages by nurses in hospital emergency departments are meant to improve the care of patients. Yet that is the course of action members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) have decided to take.

All members working in all of the country’s emergency departments have voted overwhelmingly for a campaign of industrial action including strike. The reason: overcrowding, inadequate staffing levels and what the organisation describes as ‘the ongoing compromising of patient care’.

While the frustration of nurses is understandable, there is little doubt that patient care will be further compromised by this action. But, perhaps, that is the point the INMO is trying to make to force HSE management and the Government to face up to the crisis in our acute health service.