Maternity nurses warn of hospital staffing shortages

Nurses at a Limerick maternity hospital are unable to give mothers and babies a satisfactory level of care due to staffing shortages…

Nurses at a Limerick maternity hospital are unable to give mothers and babies a satisfactory level of care due to staffing shortages, the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) has claimed.

It said midwives at St Munchin's Maternity Hospital had over the last 18 months sought to address the staffing shortages through a series of meetings with hospital management but little had been achieved.

The INO has now requested the intervention of the Labour Relations Commission. It wants a comprehensive review of staffing levels, an increase in portering services and an increase in numbers of healthcare assistants employed at the hospital.

Mary Fogarty of the INO said that until these extra resources were secured, her members would remain in a high-risk environment and would be unable to give mothers and babies a satisfactory level of care that meets best-practice standards.

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"We have persistently raised the shortfalls with local management, who have acknowledged that difficulties and shortfalls exist, but to date we have been advised that their own efforts to secure additional appropriate resources have failed and as a result the service is operating in excess, which inevitably leads to unsatisfactory outcomes for mothers, babies and the midwives," she said.

A spokesman for the Health Service Executive said the maternity hospital, the fourth largest in the country, was extremely busy but that some of the INO claims were "rather exaggerated".