Drogheda hospital: Medical and nursing staff at the largest hospital in the north east are losing patience with the North Eastern Health Board over its failure to adequately resource Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda to meet its increased workload.
The hospital has had to deal with all major surgery from Cavan General Hospital since March when a review of 15 adverse clinical incidents at the Cavan surgery unit recommended major operations be transferred to Drogheda.
Since then, more than 80 patients have been transferred to Drogheda for major surgery, the health board has confirmed.
This has placed extra pressure on the Drogheda hospital, where non-urgent patients awaiting surgery have had their operations postponed.
Mr Maurice Stokes, a consultant surgeon at the hospital, confirmed yesterday that waiting lists for non-urgent surgery such as gall bladder operations were getting longer. "Effectively, we have been functioning as a regional hospital without being resourced as one," he said.
The hospital, he added, had just three intensive care beds despite the number of major operations it has to deal with. "There have been some patients who needed ventilation and have had to be transferred to Dublin because we did not have intensive care beds for them," he said.
He said a number of beds in a new unit at the hospital remained unused because the health board had not employed extra staff to man them.
As a result, some patients who should be in high dependency care were being managed on wards and nurses were feeling much of the pressure, he said.
His comments came as nurses in the hospital's outpatients department began working under protest yesterday. The nurses, who are members of the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO), claim the unit has had to deal with all orthopaedic patients from Cavan, Monaghan, Meath and Louth over the past 18 months without adequate staff being put in place to deal with the increased workload.
Tony Fitzpatrick, INO industrial relations officer, said the number of attendances at the department had increased by 84 per cent over the period.
"This increased activity, without the provision of the necessary additional resources, means that patients, many of whom would have travelled long distances, have to endure excessive waiting times on arrival at the hospital, sometimes over four hours, before they are treated in the department.
"Indeed, clinics that should finish at 5 p.m. regularly overrun until 7 p.m. or 8 p.m.," he said.
Mr Stokes said the nurses were "quite rightly" complaining because the outpatient unit was also functioning as a regional unit without being properly resourced.
He said appeals had been made to the health board for more resources but it was "very slow" to act.
A spokesman for the health board said the issues raised by the INO were the subject of ongoing negotiations.