‘Toxic’ overcrowding is back
NURSES and midwives have warned of a ‘toxic combination’ of hospital overcrowding and Covid-19, as the number of patients on trolleys hit its highest level since March.
Figures from the INMO show 221 patients lay on trolleys yesterday.
It came as HSE chief executive Paul Reid warned the coming winter ‘will be more difficult than ever before’ as it manages Covid-19 and scales up services that had been stalled.
The INMO said overcrowding during the pandemic increases the risk of infection, and endangers staff and patients alike.
INMO Industrial Relations Officer for Cork University Hospital, Liam Conway, said: ‘Covid and overcrowding make for a toxic combination.
This is a deadly virus and our frontline members are rightly worried for their safety and that of their patients. Infection control is necessarily compromised in a hospital with patients in corridors and on trolleys. The HSE assured us that there would be no tolerance of overcrowding during Covid.
‘Yet no actions have been taken and we are sleepwalking back to mass overcrowding.’
The INMO said that, in a letter in May this year, the HSE had pledged that ‘overcrowded health and social care facilities will no longer be tolerated’. The union said it was now calling for the Government to act to fulfil that pledge. The HSE said that by 2pm yesterday, the number of emergency department patients on trolleys had fallen to 111 from 172, not counting other wards.
Chief clinical officer with the HSE, Dr Colm Henry, told last night’s Covid-19 briefing that overcrowding must be avoided ‘at all costs’.
He added that plans are being put in place to avoid such a scenario, including extra beds and ‘a broader menu of options for people’ rather than only going to emergency departments.