THE HSE has strongly criticised the level of nursing cover to be provided during a planned work stoppage today at the emergency department in the largest hospital in the midwest.
HSE management said it had encountered “an extraordinary lack of co-operation in normal contingency planning for the stoppage which represented a new, unwelcome and potentially dangerous departure in industrial action”.
Members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation and Siptu are to take part in a four-hour work stoppage the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick between 1pm and 5pm today. The action centres on what the nurses describe as “appalling conditions for patients and the clinical safety risks” arising from overcrowding in the unit.
In a statement yesterday, the HSE in the midwest called on the nursing unions to call off the planned work stoppage.
Management said the level of cover proposed by the unions was “inadequate and unacceptable”.
The nurses and midwives organisation has said it will maintain a nursing presence in the emergency department during the four-hour stoppage “to ensure all unforeseen developments can be responded to immediately”.
The union said last night its members would provide a safe level of care and would ensure that no patient was at risk due to the planned industrial action.
The HSE urged the public to avoid the emergency department at the hospital during the stoppage except in cases of genuine need.
The union’s industrial relations officer Mary Fogarty said: “Nurses working at the hospital have repeatedly raised their concerns in respect of the clinical safety issues with both Hiqa and senior HSE management. Unfortunately, due to the inability of both bodies to address the deplorable clinical environment now visible daily at the hospital, nurses are driven to publicly highlight the extremely serious situation through industrial action.”
The HSE said no useful purpose would be served by the action, claiming it would “only exacerbate” the pressure experienced at the hospital.
HSE midwest area manager Bernard Gloster said: “In a situation where extra funding is not, and will not be, available from the Government, and all concerned know this full well, it would make better sense to sit down and see how we can best utilise the resources we have. There is no prospect of overtime payments and agency nursing being restored.”
The HSE said management could not accede to a demand that no extra beds be put up in wards. It said this was undesirable “but represents a lesser risk than allowing an unsafe build up of trolleys in the emergency department”.
