MINISTER FOR Health James Reilly has strongly criticised industrial action taken by nurses at the emergency department at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick and suggested it could have placed patients at risk.
He said the action was “unsafe, unsound and unwarranted”. He indicated nurses were in breach of the Croke Park agreement.
The nurses, who are members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and Siptu, held a four-hour work stoppage yesterday in protest at over-crowding in the unit – the second such protest action in a week. Siptu said last night that a further work stoppage will take place next Tuesday between 8.30am and 12.30pm.
Speaking in the Dáil yesterday, Dr Reilly said that as a doctor and as Minister he failed to see how patient safety was improved by taking industrial action.
“I have asked the department to contact the HSE with a view to contacting the Croke Park agreement implementation body because I believe this is ultra vires and outside the agreement.”
Asked by Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher whether he was suggesting the action by nurses was putting patients at risk, he said: “I fail to see how this improves the situation and, in my view, this could lead to more danger for patients, not less.”
The general secretary of the INMO, Liam Doran, rejected claims that the action of nurses was placing patients in jeopardy. He said it was amazing that on the day of the action management had opened previously closed beds which meant that only eight patients were on trolleys when on other days the figure was around 20.
Siptu Mid-West nursing organiser Jim McGrath said that staff were undertaking the planned third work stoppage “to finally make management respond to the deteriorating situation in the emergency department due to underfunding, patient overcrowding and a shortage of nursing staff, all of which has been exacerbated by the hospital reconfiguration programme”.
Paul Bell, divisional head of Siptu, said nurses in emergency departments across the country were under severe pressure and he could not rule out further industrial action at other hospitals.
Among those on the picket line yesterday was nurse Eileen OMahoney, who described conditions at the Limerick emergency department as “unworkable”.
“It’s deplorable really – patients are just all over the place on trolleys. They have no beds and they can wait up to two days to get to a ward,” said the nurse.
Another nurse, Mary Marks, said conditions had deteriorated over her 20 years working there.
“Conditions have gradually disimproved. The congestion has got worse, we’ve got to the stage where the trolleys are side by side. There is no space between the trolleys when we have up to 30 extra patients within the department waiting for beds on the wards.”
Ms Marks said she could envisage a situation where a patient might die because of the overcrowding.
“We do have near-misses in this department. I recently had a consultant who . . . told me that he found one of his patients in a collapsed condition on one of the corridors in the AE department. Now that is a potential clinical misadventure,” she said.
“That is why we are outside the door today. We are highlighting the dangerous conditions within the department. We want the numbers reduced . . . We are in the business of delivering care at bedside at the emergency department. We cannot do that on some days in this department, because the department is so overcrowded.”