8,000 patients on trolleys last month, say nurses

Latest: More than 8,000 patients spent time on trolleys waiting for beds in Irish hospitals last month, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation.

8,000 patients on trolleys last month, say nurses

Update 5pm: More than 8,000 patients spent time on trolleys waiting for beds in Irish hospitals last month, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation writes Joe Leogue.

INMO General Secretary Liam Doran said that the figures confirm a record level of overcrowding in the first four months of this year compared to previous years, and that it was a problem that required resources, even if that means not reducing taxes.

April's 8,145 patients on trolleys brings the running count to a total of 35,756 since the start of the year, the highest since the INMO's records began and a 2% increase on the same period in 2015.

Speaking at the INMO Annual Delegate Conference in Killarney today, Mr Doran said the overcrowding comes despite the work of nurses across the country.

"But there's not enough of them. The bed numbers aren't enough, and until that is addressed and acknowledged - which means you can't cut taxes maybe, because you have to fund the public health service - we will be always counting trolleys, instead of one day arriving at the point where we no longer need to count trolleys because they are rare or never seen. But we are a long long away from that at the moment," Mr Doran said.

"There has to be honesty. We cannot solve 10 years of neglect in one year," he said.

"That's why what we are seeking is a political health summit that will set the journey for ten to 25 years. That starts with certain parameters - a guaranteed amount of funding every year. A minimum level of bed capacity being produced. Recruitment and retention of staff to allow that to happen and then it requires honesty with the electorate as to what that will cost.

"Efficiency and effectiveness is an absolute requirement, but then you have to have an honesty that says perhaps you can't reduce taxation, or we can't give higher earners relief on the USC because we need that money to properly fund our health services," Mr Doran said.

INMO President Claire Mahon said that the health system is facing a "crisis" in recruiting and retaining nurses.

"That's not just our young graduates, that is also now our experienced nurses who are leaving the system, many of them are leaving the country for employment," she said.

A HSE recruitment drive aimed at encouraging 500 nurses to come from the UK to Ireland yielded just 83 new recruits.

"The issues are real, they're there, they're getting worse and our government needs to look at the crisis that is there, she said.

"We are losing the battle of trying to hold onto nurses and midwives," Mr Doran said, adding that the INMO will be looking for a review of pay and conditions following this conference.

INMO vice-president Geraldine Talty said that attracting people into nursing is essential for a working health system.

"We will not get nurses and midwives in this country and we will not recruit any unless the 16% pay cut we have taken over the last number of years and the increased hours we have also sustained is reversed," she said.

"We cannot have a health service without us, but there will not be enough of us to run the service unless we reverse the paycuts and reduce our hours to 37 hours which is in line with all other health care professionals."

Earlier:

The country's largest nursing and midwifery organisation has criticised the government support deal agreed between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, claiming the document is "light" on proposals for the future of Irish healthcare, writes Joe Leogue.

Around 350 delegates are attending the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation's Annual Conference which got underway in the INEC in Killarney today.

The three-day conference's agenda will be dominated by calls for pay restoration for nurses and midwives to pre-recession levels, a reduction in working hours, and an increase in staffing levels.

However, speaking ahead of today's meeting, INMO General Secretary Liam Doran (pictured) said that the organisation was disappointed in what has emerged to date on the political parties' discussion on health.

"We gather today searching for evidence, based upon the last eight weeks, that our political parties in their discussions about forming a new government get it, in terms of the challenges facing the health system," Mr Doran said.

"It seems to have been very light in terms of the discussions on health and what needs to be done. What needs to be done costs resources.

"We need 1,500 additional acute beds, we need 2,000 continuing long-term care beds, we need more public health nurses in the community, we need more consultants across the extended day, we need more allied health professionals to allow diagnostics to be available across the extended day.

"Those are the realities. You can't build a health service to meet capacity without building the workforce to meet that capacity, and we don't get a sense, from what the would-be government parties have said to date, that health is really being understood by them."

Mr Doran said a study on access to healthcare released by the Irish Cancer Society last week shows that "money can buy you life" because the public health system is not large enough to meet the demand.

He described the document outlining the agreement between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil as "completely minimalist" on healthcare.

"It is completely inadequate in relation to what is required for health. If anyone needed to gather together for 84 days or whatever it was to decide we need multi-year funding for the health system, then you haven't been living on planet Earth," he said.

"The document I have seen to date is 'health light'. It is light on reform, light on change and it is light on what actually has to be done to tackle the problems that our members experience everyday and, more importantly, what patients encounter everyday," he said.

"What we need is a single tiered system where money does not buy you speed of access, where you have a system wide enough and deep enough to deal with people as they present.

"Not where if you're elderly or frail you're sharing a cubicle - every day for the last 12 years in many hospitals.

"If TDs had to share their offices, three or four of them, there'd be uproar and I guarantee there would be a Dáil committee building a four-storey building on Kildare St before the week is out.

"We had days and weeks of talks about water charges, and all those things are important, but while we're having those discussions there were between three and four hundred people on trolleys. It didn't seem to register on their Richter scale," Mr Doran said.

He suggested that political parties drop their hostilities and preconditions with a view to working together to develop a long-term heath strategy.

"We've been talking about this problem for years and we will be talking about it again until someone takes this giant leap, and that giant leap, in this new political dynamic, is there to be grasped if we have people willing to grasp it," he said.

INMO vice-president Geraldine Talty said that while water is an important resource, little attention was given in the government talks to health.

"I think it is very clear to those of us who work in health that it is most certainly pushed down the agenda. Personally I think the public would be better served if the 80-plus days that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael sat putting a government together if instead they went and spent some time in the ED department with patients who spent days on end on trolleys," she said.

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