Deferred strike causes surgery cancellations

Some 17 surgeries were postponed at Galway city’s main public hospital on Tuesday, despite nurses’ deferring planned strike action at the West’s largest Emergency Department.

Management at University Hospital Galway (UHG) confirmed that the “non urgent elective” surgeries postponed due to the threat of strike action by ED nurses will be rescheduled.

“There were seven inpatient admissions and ten day case admissions cancelled,” confirmed Saolta University Healthcare Group, which is responsible for UHG.

“All patients affected will be contacted directly by the hospital. A new date will be re-scheduled as soon as possible.”

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) announced Monday night that it was deferring strike action at UHG and six other EDs nationwide. It said two planned strike days in January (Tuesdays 12 and 26) remain in place.

Nurses will vote on a deal brokered between INMO and the Health Service Executive (HSE) over the next fortnight following a proposal that emerged at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).

The new measures under the package include, “tightening and earlier activation of the national ‘escalation’ policy” to minimise overcrowding and waits on trolleys and to avoid extra beds and trolleys on inpatient wards.

The package includes measures to assist with recruitment and retention of nurses in EDs, including minimum staff levels, and an educational bursary for new entrants, worth €1,500 and payable after 12 months in employment. It also includes measures to improve health and safety of EDs.

UHG repeated its view that its Emergency Department is “not fit for purpose” and the need to replace it is “urgent”.  It said 30 extra inpatient beds, close to ED, will be in place “shortly”.  “These beds will provide much needed additional patient accommodation. Work is also continuing on the construction of a new 75-bed ward block to provide single room in-patient accommodation and this is expected to be completed in 18 months,” it said.

UHG said the ED continues to be “extremely busy” with a “sustained increase in the emergency admission rate throughout the year”.

Prior to the deferral of strike action, nurses at UHG’s ED said their protest was against “years of inhumane, undignified and immoral conditions that we, as professionals, and the patients we are accountable to, have endured.”

The nurses said their “ability to maintain safe standards of care, in the face of horrendous overcrowding, is being compromised, due to inadequate staffing and a building that has been described by so many as being ‘unfit for purpose’.”

In a letter, the nurses said: “Our patients deserve safe standards of care. They deserve clean, well-staffed, timely professional nursing care when they attend our ED. Patients, and their families, have witnessed first-hand the mayhem, congestion, abuse and intolerable conditions that nurses and patients have had to endure in the ED setting. What a sad indictment of a health service that purports to put the patient first!”

The letter was signed by Siobhan McGrath, Sinead O’Neill, Pamela Bartley, Marina O’Flanagan and Ann Marie Considine on behalf of all INMO ED staff at UHG.

Fianna Fáil County Councillor and election candidate in Galway West, Mary Hoade, fears the city hospital will creak under further pressures of winter.

“I am extremely worried about what will happen over the next few months, when winter takes hold and traditionally we see more people admitted to hospital. The ED at UHG is already seriously over capacity and I have grave concerns that it will reach breaking point when more people begin arriving into the Department in January and February,” said Cllr Hoade.

Sinn Féin election candidate in Galway East, Annemarie Roche, criticised the Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar and said 30 new beds was not enough to solve the ED crisis.

Social Democrats candidate in Galway West, Niall Ó Tuathail, who has worked in the NHS in England, said the easiest way to alleviate pressure on the ED is to reduce the amount of people who need to go there. This could be achieved through an expansion of primary care, a phone triage service, and opening out-of-hours minor injuries units, he said.