A&E departments being used as 'warehouses for patients' says leading consultant
A leading consultant in emergency medicine has said hospitals are using emergency departments as warehouses for patients.
Dr Fergal Hickey from Sligo University Hospital has said overcrowding is unacceptably bad.
Talks will take place this weekend in a bid to avert a nurse’s strike planned for next week.
Dr Hickey has said nurses bear the brunt of patient’s anger - and cannot be expected to work in such conditions: “No emergency department nurse minds working in a busy department, that is what they are there to do,
“But what they can’t do is work in both a busy emergency department and also act in what a hospital is using as a warehouse for admitted in-patients.”
