A&E crisis - Patients need action not words

NOBODY could blame Irish nurses for taking to the streets in protest against the Third World conditions which patients and staff endure at overcrowded accident and emergency centres in hospitals across the country.

There is a despairing sense of Groundhog Day about this situation, which continues to get worse despite Health Minister Mary Harney’s repeated assurances the crisis would be resolved by March.

In the jaundiced eyes of patients, hundreds of whom now spend sleepless days and nights on trollies in public corridors, her much-vaunted 10-point plan, which is gradually being implemented by the newly-formed Health Service Executive, is not worth the paper it is written on.