IN-PATlENT and out-patient hospital services will vary from hospital to hospital if the strike goes ahead.

Guidelines have been issued by the Irish Nurses Organisation, but individual decisions have been taken by hospital strike committees, as well as by doctors, as to how they will respond to the strike and as to what constitutes "essential nursing services".

All accident and emergency departments will remain open but with a reduced nursing staff, as will intensive care units.

Elective admissions have been cancelled. Out-patient clinics will be cancelled. Nurses will refuse to answer phones.

Emergency surgery will be carried out but other surgery including hip replacements, varicose veins treatment, certain fractures, gall bladder, certain vascular procedures will be cancelled. Surgery such as operating on a lung tumour could also be deferred since it may not be considered an emergency.

The situation at Beaumount Hospital, one of the six major hospitals in Dublin, is similar to other big hospitals around the State. However, the strike committee at the hospital is applying the guidelines strictly.

The intensive care unit will be staffed at the same level as on Christmas Day.

The A & E department will be staffed with four staff nurses, and three student nurses, a member of the strike committee will be available, as well as another nurse on call in the event of an emergency. There will be no triage and no dressing clinics.

Normally the hospital would have up to nine theatres running each day, but there will be just one during the strike, and three nursing staff compared to 24 at peak morning time. Because it is the national neurological centre, the strike committee has agreed that more theatre staff will come in if there is an emergency such as a car crash.

Nurses on wards will be operating in a very restricted manner not giving intravenous drugs or taking blood. They will not be informing doctors if a patient needs an IV drug.

The National Poisons Centre based at Beaumount will only be available to GPs, and at night the service will be operated from the centre in Belfast.

Senior nurses will refuse to operate a mini-pharmacy service on wards. Wards have been stocked with drugs and it is expected that pharmacists will assist.

Service to diabetics will be restricted. The warfarin clinic, a drug administered to people with certain forms of heart and vascular problems, will be run by doctors at the hospital. X-rays will be restricted.

If a GPO refers an urgent case to the breast clinic the strike committee has agreed to deal with it. Endoscopies, gastroscopies, colonoscopies and bronchoscopies are cancelled unless extremely urgent.

According to Dr Ray Coakley, honorary secretary of the lMO and the organisation's NCHD representative at the hospital, the junior doctors have got together at local level in the hospital.

"If nurses are unwilling to carry out certain duties, we will do it in order to protect patient interest, so there will be no loss of life. Doctors had volunteered to do extra time," said Dr Coakley.

"We will be trying to ensure that nobody misses things like antibiotics which may be life saving. We are not trying to usurp the nurses but we do feel we have a duty to the patients," he explained.

The State's private hospital will not be affected by the strike.