Nurses to step up campaign against overcrowding
Nurses vowed to step up their campaign against overcrowding on hospital A&E wards today to demand immediate Government action to solve the problem.
Over 300 delegates to the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) special conference voted in favour of stepping up their ’Enough is Enough’ protest campaign to highlight the problem afflicting the country's hospitals.
Noel Treanor, Industrial Relations Officer of the INO, said the Health Minister Mary Harney’s 10-point plan had not worked to solve the problem.
He said: “Our services are working to capacity. You don’t want to wish it but you have to expect that this will probably be the worst winter yet on A&E wards. If it is a bad winter God help us all.”
Liam Doran, general secretary of the INO, said an average of over 200 people were recorded each day on trolleys in hospital A&E wards during the summer.
The delegates passed a motion for a second phase of the ‘Enough is Enough’ protests, involving the full trade union movement through a campaign organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and a co-ordinated national postcard campaign to be sent to the Tánaiste in conjunction with patients and their families.
The INO said it would resist any moves by hospitals to put extra beds in wards to ease the overcrowding in A&E wards.
Madeline Spiers, the INO President, warned extra beds could not be placed on already overcrowded and understaffed wards.
Ms Spiers said the nurses and healthcare staff could not afford to wait two more years before the A&E situation improved.
The INO executive council also said they would be seeking legal advice on the possibility of taking a human rights case on behalf of patients placed in overcrowded wards with little privacy.
There were calls at the conference for closed beds to be opened and the staff employment ceiling to be lifted.
The conference also heard demands for the organisation to pursue its claims for improvement in pay and conditions for nurses and midwives, directly with health employers, rather than through the upcoming Benchmarking agreement.
