PATIENTS AT Dublin’s Central Mental Hospital were locked in their rooms yesterday morning because of a staff shortage linked to the lengthy psychiatric nurses’ dispute.
Patient transfers and ward closures hit hospitals across the State yesterday, as the dispute appeared to become increasingly bitter ahead of talks in the Labour Relations Commission today.
The Health Service Executive (HSE) criticised the nurses’ actions, while the nurses warned the Government that their “goodwill” was fast running out.
Employers’ group Ibec accused nurses and their unions of “using the most vulnerable in our society and their families without regard to the impact of their actions on mental health service provision”.
About 80 patients at the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum were locked in their rooms for an extra 90 minutes yesterday morning after nurses refused to go on to the wards because of staff shortages. The patients are normally let out of their rooms at 8am, but doors weren’t unlocked until after 9.30am yesterday.
The Psychiatric Nurses’ Association said patients were never at risk – they received their medication and were allowed out of their rooms for toilet breaks – but there is a high likelihood similar lockdowns will happen again.
“It’s entirely possible,” said the association’s Des Kavanagh. “There is a national dispute and and the problems emerging at Dundrum can repeat themselves. I hope we make progress in the national talks. If the employers are not willing to find a solution then the goodwill our members have shown over the last 36 hours will not be repeated.”
The HSE’s 8,000 psychiatric nurses are refusing to work overtime in a dispute that centres on a compensation scheme for staff attacked on the job.
Yesterday’s stoppage in Dundrum occurred when staff realised there were too few people to run the afternoon shift, said Mr Kavanagh. The nurses reached a compromise agreement to reopen the wards yesterday and today with HSE managers. But at other hospitals, wards were being closed and patients transferred to neighbouring facilities, he added.
Units at St Loman’s Hospital in Palmerstown were closed last night to free up staff to reopen a main admissions ward in Tallaght hospital, he said, with patients transferred to Tallaght.
Ibec said the overtime ban was “unacceptable”. “The end cannot justify the means.”
Minister for Health Mary Harney welcomed the Labour Relations Commission’s invitation to hold talks with the warring parties today. She expressed “deep concern” at the impact of the dispute on the care of psychiatric patients.
Labour’s health spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan also called on both sides to make themselves available to meet at the LRC.
Meanwhile, delegates at the Irish Nurses’ Organisation annual conference in Co Cavan voted unanimously to support the industrial action being taken by the nurses and Siptu.