As nurses began returning to normal duties yesterday, many accident and emergency departments had to cope with an influx of patients.
Dublin's five main acute hospitals urged people to help prevent major delays by consulting their GPs first and not attending with minor ailments.
The hospitals also announced that patients whose non-emergency in-patient and out-patient appointments were postponed during the strike would soon be contacted individually with new appointments.
The hospitals - Beaumont, the Mater, the Adelaide and Meath at Tallaght, St James's and St Vincent's - said their medical teams would prioritise the rescheduling of appointments.
The Irish Hospital Consultants' Association said it had certain concerns about the "lack of urgency" shown by health boards in rescheduling out-patient appointments and theatre lists or adding extra appointments to deal with people affected by the strike. Its spokesman, Mr Finbarr Fitzpatrick, said hospitals had begun to "wind down" elective procedures last year from the start of December, but he hoped they would continue until mid-December this year to deal with the strike backlog.
As nurses went back on duty yesterday, an accident and emergency consultant at the Mater Hospital in Dublin, Dr Peter O'Connor, said the department was "absolutely flooded" yesterday, with a 200 per cent increase in patients.
"Patients are coming from GPs or those who missed their out-patient appointments during the strike. We are now expected to do three or four or five days' work in one and the patients are not in the slightest bit happy and neither am I," he said.
Dublin's largest five hospitals have placed advertisements in today's newspapers outlining their plans to resume normal services.