A nursing shortage has forced surgeons at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin to postpone operations on a rota basis, according to a general surgeon, Mr Paddy Broe.
Mr Broe's surgery list was cancelled yesterday as part of the rota, which also affects orthopaedic and brain surgery as well as other operations, he said.
Dublin teaching hospitals are affected by the problem as nurses leave the city to get away from high living costs, especially the high cost of accommodation, he told The Irish Times.
Meanwhile, a 24-hour epidural service for women in labour has been restored at St Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny - but only for a week. The hospital has been unable to provide epidurals between midnight and 8 a.m. because of a shortage of anaesthetists. Yesterday, the South-Eastern Health Board announced that it had found a locum registrar for a week.
The announcement underlines the difficulties facing hospitals outside the main cities in recruiting doctors. According to one consultant, doctors prefer to do their training in the main cities. However, when it comes to nursing, the problem operates in the opposite direction - with nurses reluctant to move to Dublin.
Mr Broe said that Beaumont was short of 123 nurses. Apart from the postponement of operations, the shortage meant that 12 of the 34 beds on his ward were out of commission. There was also extreme pressure on beds through the accident and emergency department, which could result in the postponement of elective surgery.
Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin has had to delay some admissions because of nursing shortages.
The Mater Hospital in Dublin and others have employed Filipina nurses to try to meet the shortfall and Mr Broe said he understood the experiment had been very successful. He said Beaumont was recruiting 70 nurses from the Philippines. But, until they were in place, surgeons would face difficulties in providing any sort of quality service to patients other than emergency and cancer patients.
During the summer, the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, said that the Medical Manpower Forum, established by his predecessor, Mr Cowen, was "the only show in town" when it came to resolving the recruitment crisis in the health services. The work of the forum was delayed, first by the nurses' dispute late last year and then by the Non-Consultant Hospital Doctors' dispute this year, and it has still to issue its report.
Meanwhile, health boards and hospitals struggle to fill shortfalls in staffing. The South-Eastern Health Board, for example, has sent representatives to recruitment fairs in Germany and Spain and has sought anaesthetists through foreign recruitment agencies, but still had to curtail its epidural services until today.
pomorain@irish-times.ie