Sustained commitment needed to solve A&E overcrowding

The solution to the current A&E crisis lies not just in emergency departments but throughout the provision of health services, writes Dave Hughes

Yesterday, 601 admitted patients nationwide lay waiting on a trolley or sitting on a chair in an overcrowded emergency department.

The same day, news broke that nurses in the emergency department at Beaumont Hospital had unanimously voted in favour of industrial action as patients were interviewed on radio across the country detailing the indignity and suffering they had gone through and their disbelief at how nurses and doctors could be expected to work in such intolerable conditions.