Covid pandemic fallout is a tsunami of missed care and mental strain on health staff
Nurses and doctors are frightened and exhausted, writes Eilish O’Regan
THOUSANDS of patients with nonCovid illnesses are in a hidden backlog of waiting lists due to missed or overdue care caused by the surge in coronavirus hospital admissions, it emerged yesterday.
The plight of these patients comes as the strain of frontline healthcare workers and the toll it has taken on them during the gruelling year of battling the pandemic was laid bare.
In some cases frightened health workers claimed to be threatened with disciplinary action for wearing the highest grade masks, while one doctor warned that staff are so exhausted they cannot help their children with schoolwork and they may fall behind.
The insight into the struggles of frontline heroes emerged at the Oireachtas Health Committee yesterday. Here are some of the revelations.
1. Hospitals are facing a tsunami of missed care.
The need to transform wards into Covid-only spaces for many weeks has left a dangerous backlog of waiting lists.
Dr Rob Landers of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association said the crisis is exacerbated by a lack of specialists. The number of unfilled consultant posts has risen from 500 to 728.
“There will be a scandalous cost to patients unless the recruitment crisis is not addressed,” he said.
He told the committee that a survey of doctors found Covid-19 had a moderate or severe impact on their workload, general well-being and mental health.
More than one one-fifth are experiencing symptoms of burnout and work-related stress.
“This includes feelings of physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, feelings of detachment from their work and feelings of reduced professional ability or accomplishment,” he said.
“Doctors want to work in a public health service with appropriate staffing levels, properly resourced teams and the required equipment and facilities to provide high quality, safe care to patients.
“Even before Covid there were not enough doctors and consultants to do this.
“There are around 840,000 people on some form of hospital waiting list. Regrettably, in the short term due to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, these numbers will deteriorate further.”
2. The impact of the pandemic has led to an escalation in mental health distress.
However, there is a shortage of acute beds for psychiatric patients.
Psychiatrists find themselves desperately looking for a bed – even for suicidal patients, warned Dublin consultant Dr Gabrielle Colleran.
3. Nurses and midwives have been told they must fund their own childcare arrangements.
Phil Ní Sheaghda of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said they have asked various Government departments for support and requested the Department of Education to open schools for essential workers.
She said nurses were left to make their own arrangements to have their children looked after while they made themselves available as frontline workers.
They have now been informed by the Department of Health that childcare costs must be funded by workers themselves.
Dr Colleran said healthcare staff are coming home from work exhausted and unable to help their children with schoolwork.
She felt the workers were abandoned by the State when it comes to childcare.
“My children and my colleagues’ children are being traumatised.
“We are too tired and burned out to help them with homeschooling when we come home.”
4. Just 49,000 frontline healthcare workers are now fully vaccinated. It would have taken longer had the OxfordAstraZeneca vaccine not been diverted from the over-70s to health staff.
The INMO said the initial roll-out of the vaccine to staff did not take account of the counties worst hit, such as Monaghan and Louth.
5. Public health doctors who are at the centre of investigating and controlling Covid-19 outbreaks are struggling due to lack of staff.
Anthony Owens, head of industrial relations at the Irish Medical Organisation, said: “Public health medicine is the first line of defence that we have against Covid-19, yet we have just 60 public health specialists employed compared to 180 in Scotland and New Zealand – where the population is of a similar size.
“Public health specialists have the expertise and training to carry out risk assessments and manage and control outbreaks of infection in our healthcare settings and in the wider community.
“Yet public health specialists have still not been provided with a consultant contract and the resources necessary to allow them to carry out their statutory duties to the top of their licence.
“It beggars belief, and should be a cause of considerable shame, that these doctors – our frontline in this battle – had to ballot for industrial action, in a pandemic, to have their long-running grievances considered in a serious fashion.”
7. Some health staff who insisted on getting highgrade face masks in the third wave were threatened with disciplinary action until a directive was issued by the HSE, according to the INMO.
8. Student nurses are working in the frontline but not being paid.
With thousands of full-time staff out, they are being asked to take on tasks even though they are not trained. They are seen as an extra pair of hands.
9. The recruitment of nurses internationally is likely to be hampered by current travel restrictions.
THE Government has conceded its Plan for Living with Covid-19 is not working and it is drafting a new framework for exiting the third national lockdown.
Just weeks after Taoiseach Micheál Martin insisted the Government was sticking to the original plan it has emerged the framework is now being overhauled to provide for a slower reopening of the country.
Yesterday, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar admitted the Government was redrafting the existing plan to take into account the national vaccination roll-out and the emergence of new variants.
The move follows weeks of calls from the public and businesses for clarity on when the Government planned to ease Covid-19 restrictions.
Since Christmas, the Government has refused to give any clarity on when childcare, schools and colleges will reopen.
Retailers, restaurant owners and publicans have also been left in the dark for more than a month.
The revised framework will involve a much slower reopening of society. It will begin with schools reopening, followed by construction and over time other sectors will be permitted to reopen.
The details of the new plan will be worked on over the next two weeks before being published on February 22.
The announcement came just hours after Labour leader Alan Kelly called on the Taoiseach to outline a strategy for dealing with the pandemic as he said the Plan for Living with Covid-19 has become “irrelevant”.
“Living with Covid has failed. So we don’t have a strategy,” said Mr Kelly.
“I don’t expect him to stand up and say living with Covid is still our strategy because it has never worked. It’s not working now. So I want to know what is the strategy.”
In recent weeks, the Taoiseach, along with Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, have robustly defended the Plan for Living with Covid-19, which was published last September.
Since the plan was published the Government has imposed two national lockdowns.
During an interview on RTÉ Radio One, the Tánaiste said when the Government developed its plan last summer it did not take into consideration the introduction of vaccines and did not know about the possibility of new variants of the virus.
“There’s been a degree of experience over the past couple of months in terms of what reopenings can cause problems and which ones don’t,” he added.
The Tánaiste said it was now “appropriate” that the Government “refreshed” the existing Plan for Living with Covid-19. He said the new plan would also take into account issues such as extending the Pandemic Unemployment Payment and the wage subsidy scheme.
Mr Varadkar said he did not expect construction to open before March 5.
He said personal services such as hairdressers and barbers were not expected to open until after March 5.
The current lockdown has been in place since just after Christmas.
‘We didn’t consider roll-out of vaccines or new Covid variants’