Overcrowding in hospitals and emergency departments has reached an “intolerable” level heading into the New Year as the health service deals with a major surge of winter viruses, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has said.
Government and health service sources are expecting hospitals to come under further strain from a surge of Covid-19 infections, cases of the flu and other respiratory viruses over the coming days.
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There were 570 patients waiting for beds in hospitals on Friday, down from 631 the day before, according to the INMO’s daily trolley watch count.
Internal Health Service Executive (HSE) figures show 427 patients were waiting in emergency departments, down slightly from 447 the previous day.
The numbers waiting in emergency departments by the HSE’s count is more than double what it was this day last year, when 205 patients were waiting for beds. However, the numbers attending emergency departments were far lower than usual during much of the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘Constant state of crisis’
Phil Ní Sheaghdha, INMO general secretary, said the current state of the health service was “extremely concerning” with nurses having spent this year “working in a constant state of crisis”.
The union leader said staff were “firefighting intolerable overcrowding coupled with highly transmissible viruses and infections”.
In the busiest hospitals, she said, frontline staff had been warning that current conditions were compromising patient safety.
Ms Ní Sheaghdha said numbers waiting on trolleys often had the potential to nearly double during the first week of January.
“The State cannot walk into the next week unprepared for what could be a severe overcrowding crisis,” she said. “We cannot allow a drift into this dangerous situation emerging across the country.”
The Government and the HSE have accepted overcrowding in hospitals for “far too long”, she added.
Forecast
The HSE had forecast that more than 900 people would be in hospitals with the flu by early January, as well as 1,200 patients with Covid-19.
In a statement on Friday, the HSE said the surge of winter viruses was following the “more pessimistic” of its forecasts, and looked to be hitting the health service two weeks earlier than expected.
Contracts with private hospitals have allowed the HSE to access an extra 145 beds for urgent or emergency admissions, it said.
“There has been a reduction in planned surgeries and procedures, however, every effort is being made to proceed with time-sensitive and urgent surgery,” the statement said.
Dr Colm Henry, HSE chief clinical officer, said the “steep incline” in flu cases was now higher than levels seen in 2019, previously the worst flu season in recent years. There was “no sign yet” that the wave of current flu cases had peaked, he said.
“We expect this incline to remain sharply upwards for a number of weeks to come,” he said.
Dr Henry advised people it was not too late to get a flu vaccine or Covid-19 booster shot, even though they would take two weeks to offer protection.
The HSE’s crisis team of senior management has routinely met over the last week to discuss the situation in hospitals.
There is an expectation that more elective surgeries may be curtailed or moved to hospitals without emergency departments to take some pressure off busier hospitals.
Efforts to help the situation to date have included asking GPs to work longer hours and to open clinics on Saturdays to try to ease some of the flow into hospital emergency departments.
