MULLINGAR Hospital saw a record amount of patients on trollies for the month of July, it was announced on Tuesday.
Newly released figures by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation’s (INMO) trolley/ward watch analysis show that 498 people were on trollies for the month. The numbers were up a startling 203 on last year’s figures of 295 and 481 on figures from 2006.
INMO General Secretary, Liam Doran said the figures are extremely disappointing and indicated the health system continues to underestimate the challenges arising within our Emergency Departments.
Speaking to Topic Mr. Doran said there was no single reason behind the huge surge in numbers. “It has gone backwards big time. The main reason is increased volumes of attendances, closures of hospital beds, ability to recruit staff and a lack, in our view, of senior clinical decision makers over the extended day to try and speed up the patient processes through Mullignar. The core problem is that the attendance numbers have grown and the hospital hasn’t grown to match that.”
He said the INMO would view Mullingar as being “one of the blackest of the black spots” in recent months. “It has had severe overcrowding which sometimes goes under the radar because it’s not a Beamount or a Mater or Vincent’s or whatever. But in relative terms, Mullingar, for the size of the ED, is in a very, very difficult position. The only way it will be solved is by, in the short-term, significantly increasing the number of staff employed so the patients can have better care and that will then allow some additional beds to be opened.
“It is linked to Portlaoise and Tullamore and the whole catchment area in terms of bed capacity and so on – no one place can solve it all. But Mullingar is in under severe pressure at the moment and patients are suffering and sometimes staff are suffering as a result.”
Mr. Doran said that INMO nurses’ workloads had become intolerable due to the stress they were being placed under due to a lack of staff. “The wards are overcrowded and the emergency department is overcrowded so in the short term they want more staff. The difficulty in securing more staff is problematic because staff have choices in terms of where they work, whether they stay in Ireland or whether they emigrate. The problem is not helped by the fact that the HSE hospitals, of which Mullingar is one, are much less flexible and speedy with regard to offering job contracts, as to compared with Dublin voluntary hospitals like the Mater, Beamount or Vincent, who are much quicker at getting contracts out for new staff and permanent staff and so on than the HSE houses.”
He said that the hospital’s staff problem was ultimately due to the midlands not being competitive enough when it comes to attracting nurses.
“Without nurses you can’t open the beds and without the beds you have overcrowding in the ED department. Our members are always very frustrated in Mullingar and I cannot rule out, as we go into the Autumn, industrial action at Mullingar or Tullamore.
He said that he believed the only way the problem could be solved was if the Minister for Heatlh and the HSE, at senior level, accepted that additional measures are required to attract and retain nurses. “There’s no other way around it. When you have a mobile workforce that has options, you have to compete with those options. If you look at the private healthcare sector in this country – they are offering a €5,000 sign-on bonus, subsidised accommodation for a few months and so on. If you go to the UK, there is a €3,000 or €5,000 sign-on, accommodation, paid return trip once a year, guaranteed post-graduate education opportunities in 12 months. That’s what you are competing against and until Mullingar does that, and in fairness, Tullamore, Limerick, Waterford, Cork or other blackspots, they won’t compete.”
“If you look at the figures for the last number of years, you will see that in 2006 they had 17. Now they have 498. No one can call that progress. That’s disastrous and it’s an appalling indictment on our health system,” he concluded.
The joint chairs of the ED Taskforce, Tony O’ Brien (HSE)/Liam Doran (INMO), will be meeting with the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, next week to discuss the current situation, including the continuing severe difficulties with regard to recruiting and retaining nursing staff.