Slaintecare reforms needs to be fast-track as Irish public hospitals constantly overcrowded, INMO head says
OVER 25,000 patients have languished on trolleys so far this year, a huge increase compared to 2021.
The country’s nurses and midwives are under severe pressure dealing with huge numbers of Covid and non-Covid patients presenting at emergency departments.
Covid and winter illnesses, coupled with inadequate staffing levels, is pushing the numbers waiting on beds to dangerous pre-pandemic levels.
According to experts, if a patient is on a trolley for more than five hours it can have a significant knock-on impact on their health and indeed their mortality. However, in Ireland, patients are waiting on trolleys for over 54 hours in some cases.
That’s why the INMO (Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation) is urging the Government and State agencies to tackle the issue NOW.
INMO General Secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha explains how are hospitals are in crisis and need urgent intervention.
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IN THE OVERCROWDED and besieged public health sector, the pandemic is not over.
This is despite the relaxation of many of the public restrictions, which the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has urged caution about the relaxation, particularly of mask-wearing.
Unfortunately, as predicted and as inevitable we now have a greater spread and contagion and more hospital admissions.
The simple fact is that Irish public hospitals are constantly overcrowded, which means we need to fast-track the changes set out in the Slaintecare policy.
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We need services available in community health care sectors, X-rays, scans, ultrasounds, these diagnostic services are a very important part of determining the nature of illness and should not require, in 2022, admission to hospital to be secured.
Last week, members of the INMO who work in Emergency departments across the country met the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly and among other issues raised they gave several examples of patients being admitted on a Thursday or Friday for scans on a Tuesday.
That is the clearest example of an upside-down system that could have been presented. Imagine the patients, in the hospital for four to five nights, receiving no treatment, waiting for a diagnostic scan, exposed unnecessarily to the risk of contracting a hospital-acquired infection such as Covid-19.
PROBLEMS EXISTED BEFORE PANDEMIC
This, by the way, is not a low risk considering in week 9 of 2022 a total of 129 Covid-19 outbreaks were recorded, of those 116 were in health care facilities with 28 in Acute Hospitals.
Air hygiene in hospitals is poor, Covid-19 is an airborne pathogen and despite all the evidence the HSE has attached very little urgency, to the very real need for the introduction of hospital-wide air filtration and measurement systems.
As nurses and other health care workers working in this system know, the current occupancy, overcrowding, and inhumane conditions that have existed for patients and staff working in these environments have not been caused by Covid, but they have been made much worse due to it.
It is extraordinary that the HSE tries to argue that Covid delays in care have caused this current overcrowding. The lessons of every winter since 2006 when the then Minister for Health, Mary Harney, declared overcrowding a national emergency has not been learned.
The simple fact is that Irish public hospitals are constantly overcrowded, which means we need to fast-track the changes set out in the Slaintecare policy.
Phil Ni Sheaghdha
Overcrowding in our hospital is now a common part of Irish winters with 2021/2022 being no different.
There is simply no urgency applied to dealing with the long-term problem of a lack of availability of diagnostic services outside of hospitals, insufficient beds available in acute hospitals, and very few step-down beds, for those needing care after an acute illness and hospital stay before they return home.
There is an undoubted attitude of complacency reflecting an acceptance of this endemic disgrace.
It is not accepted by this trade union that the cause of the overcrowding since November 2021 is increased patient numbers attending hospitals due to delayed care during Covid.
BETTER-ORGANISED SYTEM NEEDED
That is simply an excuse trotted out to cover up lengthy inaction and a fundamental disregard for the right to expect safe care in a timely fashion, and a safe working environment for those trying their best to provide it against the odds.
We simply must have a better-organised system, linking all services to better serve the patient, this is what Slaintecare envisaged.
We must together call for Regional Health Authorities to be prioritised, the highest office of government – Department of a Taoiseach - to oversee the implementation, and no more excuses. 'Slaintecare lite’ is not good enough - it is just too serious. We are causing harm to those relying on the services and turning those who work in this fractured system into apologists for matters outside their control.
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Without evident immediate change, we will undoubtedly force the necessary staff to choose to leave and work elsewhere. We can and must do better.
The Government cannot plead ignorance of the real human effects of overcrowding any longer, they have been advised in the clearest of terms and now must act – as delays cost lives.
