Urgent action must be taken to alleviate overcrowding in one of the country's busiest emergency departments, an organisation representing 800 staff at Beaumont hospital have said.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Association (INMO) said that in meetings held in recent weeks that 800 members of the organisation working in Beaumont hospital, Dublin have become concerned at increasing overcrowding situation at the hospital.
Edward Mathews, INMO Industrial Relations Officer said that urgent action was required to reverse cutbacks which had caused the closure of 60 acute beds in the past year and to find places for 81 patients who were medically fit to be discharged but could not be moved on as no nursing home beds were available.
"Urgent action is necessary to ensure that patients who are fit to be discharged from the hospital have a long term bed where this is required, and further action is needed to ensure that all available acute beds are opened immediately to ease this extreme pressure which is extraordinarily unusual at this time of year," he said.
In a statement a spokesman for Beaumont hospital's said the emergency department there had been under severe pressure this week.
He said that, while at 8am today there were 38 patients awaiting admission to the hospital, the hospital had implemented its full emergency protocol and that this figure had been reduced to 17 by this afternoon.
He said that the hospital continued to work towards ensuring sustainable long-term solutions to the difficulties of emergency department overcrowding, adding that the opening of additional long stay capacity at the community nursing unit at St Joseph's hospital in Raheny would help alleviate the situation.
In 2010, and for the first quarter of 2011, there were 59,148 attendances to the Accident and Emergency eepartment in Beaumount, making it the country's second busiest emergency department.