The work-to-rule action by 40,000 nurses is putting patient safety at risk and may reduce overall service, Health Service Executive chief executive Brendan Drumm has claimed.
Prof Drumm said the action by the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) and the Psychiatric Nurses' Association (PNA) is "creating potential risk situations and the capability of the health services to sustain current contingency arrangements is questionable".
Prof Brendan Drumm, HSE
In a statement, the HSE chief claimed that among the problems the action had caused were situations where calls from emergency departments to theatres to alert them to the arrival of urgent patients were not being taken and critical time was being lost.
There had also been situations where patients from the emergency departments were arriving on wards with incomplete notes and were then directed back to A&E, he said.
"In some hospitals the action it is having a very significantly impact on bed management which is slowing down patients admissions and discharges," Prof Drumm said.
"Nurses are highly professional and have a history of practising to the highest ethical standards. I am sure that many are having difficulty reconciling this commitment to their profession with the industrial action they are being asked to take on. This is regrettable particularly when we are more than willing to sit down with the unions to address their grievances," Prof Drumm said.
Nursing unions yesterday said the HSE had not raised with them details of a leaked internal report that outlined problems that had reportedly arisen in hospitals due to the work-to-rule.
The problems cited in the report included delays in bodies being released to families and a patient being left in pain for hours at a Dublin hospital.
The HSE again said the nurses' demands could only be addressed through negotiations.
"I have said that the HSE is fully open to considering reducing the working week for nurses. However we cannot sign up to a commitment to reduce the working week by a particular date until we can agree how it could be achieved and unions sign up to the changes to make it possible. To do so would be irresponsible," Prof Drumm said today.
He said the HSE has "reached a point where it has to look carefully at whether it can continue to maintain services at normal levels while, at the same time, assuring patients' safety.
"As our capability to manage the risks becomes increasingly compromised we will have to concentrate on emergency and critical care and this may result in a reduction in overall service to patients," said Prof Drumm in his statement.
He added that the dispute is affecting health service budgets "which may impact on the HSE's ability to provide patient services during the year".
His statement came as nurses announced another phase of work stoppages for next week.
"We are responsible to patients and taxpayers. It is becoming hard to justify a situation where we have 40,000 staff on full salary doing just 60-80 per cent of the duties they are paid to do, while, on the other hand, we also have to bring in extra people and pay overtime to make up this shortfall."
The Irish Patients' Association expressed concern at the leaked HSE report yesterday. It said it was clearly time for "reasonable men and women to read this report as a wake-up call and not a death knell for some patients".