The industrial action by nurses in all public hospitals will be extended to private hospitals "within days" unless they too agree to improve nurses' pay and conditions, it was confirmed yesterday.
Liam Doran, general secretary of the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO), said a claim for a 10.6 per cent pay rise and a 35-hour working week had also been served on the State's private hospitals and the union was awaiting a response from them.
"A failure by them to concede those claims will see them involved in the campaign in the short term and we are talking about in days," he said.
The news came as the Health Service Executive (HSE), among others, claimed the ongoing work-to-rule by 40,000 nurses who are members of the INO and the Psychiatric Nurses' Association (PNA) is beginning to affect patient services.
John McCormack, chief executive of the Irish Cancer Society, said the dispute was jeopardising the care of cancer patients. He called for cancer services to be exempted from the dispute.
And amid claims that cancer patients were having difficulty accessing test results because nurses were not answering telephones except in emergency cases during the dispute, Prof John Armstrong, a cancer specialist at St Luke's and St Vincent's hospitals in Dublin and chairman of the Irish Cancer Society, said: "This incredibly vulnerable group of patients cannot wait for the results of tests and for information on their treatment plan.
"They need access to nurses to get that information, especially when they are outpatients and they are being denied that access because of the dispute."
He added: "The situation is likely to worsen considerably for cancer patients when the dispute escalates and we may see surgery and other essential treatment being cancelled."
Mr Doran said he noted the society's concerns and said the union would look again at the contingency arrangements in place. "But we are confident that our current approach upholds the dignity of all patients and ensures that all required nursing care continues to be available without delay," he said. The industrial action is due to be escalated to include short rolling work stoppages from next Wednesday.
Sheila O'Connor of Patient Focus called on both sides to return to talks. "We don't agree with patients in the middle of warring factions. We think it's inevitable that bad things will happen due to the lack of computerised records being kept," she said.
"We also want to say to nurses that their main duty of care is to the patient rather than to unions and just because there is a dispute on, it does not alter the duty of care of an individual nurse to an individual patient, nor does it alter the ethical standards under which they work," she added.
Stephen McMahon, of the Irish Patients' Association, said the benchmarking process should be used by the nurses to pursue their claims.
The director of industrial relations with the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation (Ibec), Brendan McGinty, said the decision by the INO and the PNA to engage in a series of work stoppages from next week was regrettable and a clear breach of Towards 2016. He urged them to reconsider, and said the nurses should use benchmarking to have their claims considered.
But the unions say they have lost faith in benchmarking.
Operations were again cancelled at Waterford Regional Hospital yesterday and also at Dublin's Rotunda Hospital as a result of the dispute, the HSE said. Furthermore it said many A&E units were congested.
Dr Eamonn Brazil, an A&E consultant at Dublin's Mater hospital, said there was extra pressure on the hospital's emergency department but he pointed out that the unit was constantly under pressure. "The difficulty is there is no spare capacity. We are constantly overstretched . . . we would be worried this could be the last straw," he added.
A woman with diabetes who called the RTÉ Liveline programme claimed she had not been able to get her monthly blood test done because a nurse would not print a computerised label for the sample. As part of their work-to-rule, nurses are refusing to carry out clerical, administrative or IT work.