FIGURES just released by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), show that the number of people being left on trolleys in the emergency department of the Regional Hospital has almost trebled in five years. And while the HSE is in the process of recruiting more nurses, their representative body says it won’t be enough. Figures supplied to the Limerick Post show that in the first three months of 2007, there were 569 people on trolleys at the Emergency Department of the Midwest Regional hospital.
This jumped to 1,264 for the January to April period this year.
After a series of crises where number waiting for beds in the E D shot up, the hospital and the HSE was visited by the Special Delivery Unit and an exemption to the recruiting ban was given in order hire nurses.
INMO mid-west representative, Mary Fogarty, said that there is “no doubt that the reconfiguration process at the hospital has contributed to this increase”.
She added that these figures don’t tell the whole story. “Those are the figures from the Emergency Department. They don’t reflect the numbers who are on trolleys in corridors or who have been admitted because the day ward has been opened. Opening the ward is all very well, but the hospital doesn’t have the staff to run it”.
Other figures released to the Limerick Post by the INMO show that a total of 257 beds were closed in hospitals in Limerick and surrounding counties in recent years, a move which the organisation says is contributing to the problem.
In recent weeks, the number of patients waiting on trolleys had dropped, and Ms Fogarty opines this is due in part to hospital management opening day beds.
“They are recruiting 30 nursing staff but those staff are not on board yet, and even when they are hired, it won’t be enough to replace the staff who have retired”.
The INMO representative also confirmed what sources in the health service had told the Limerick Post, that hospital staff at the Midwest Regional and the Maternity Hospital, are furious that agency staff are ‘cherry-picking’ the day-shifts, leaving them to cover the anti-social hours.
“Because the people who have retired are senior and very experienced, they can pick and choose what shifts they want to do. Staff are not happy that their retired colleagues, who have their pensions, are being brought back as agency staff. Younger nurses can’t get any work. There are 4,000 nurses on a staff nurse panel in Ireland at the moment. The retirement scheme was a blunt instrument. The services can’t work that way – hospitals have to deliver a certain level of service”.
