5,210 PATIENTS WAIT FOR A BED
Nurses call for urgent solution
MORE than 5,210 patients, including 100 children, were left waiting for a bed in Irish hospitals since the beginning of September. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has called for urgent action from the HSE ahead of today’s Emergency Department Taskforce meeting. There were a record number of hospital patients on trolleys in August and figures have remained persistently high since then. The INMO is warning that new trolley target measures will not be effective and said “workable solutions” need to be agreed for the HSE’S winter plan. Speaking on the eve of World Patient Safety Day, its general secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha said: “Irish nurses and midwives provide exemplary care but the conditions in which they are expected to [work] are getting worse with each passing day. “While the number of patients on trolleys in wards right across hospitals increases. “Nurses and midwives are facing into yet another winter where they are left in impossible and often dangerous care environments. “We know that overcrowding of this nature has significant impacts on the long-term health outcomes of any patient that spends more than six hours on a trolley. “The HSE and individual hospital groups must bring something new to the table to ensure that patient safety is enhanced over the coming months. “Our members are reporting that significant overcrowding coupled with unmet recruitment and retention targets are making it impossible to provide safe care to those who need it most.” Last week the INMO called for overcrowding in hospitals to be treated as a national emergency, with 524 people waiting on trolleys in a single day, 105 of them at University Hospital Limerick. Ms Ni Sheaghdha said: “Year-onyear we are having the same conversations about the very real impact hospital overcrowding is having on patient safety. “Senior decisionmakers must prioritise the de-escalation of overcrowded areas and remove these very real barriers to providing safe care to patients.”