We need an immediate review of accident and emergency services in Dublin so that further industrial action on the part of nurses which commenced on 15 March and which is to continue tomorrow can be avoided.
Problems have arisen in Dublin, with a shortage of acute hospital beds, no co-ordination of accident and emergency services, resulting in ambulances travelling to the same hospital many times while beds in other hospitals remain unfilled. A cohesive plan is required to deal with overcrowding in accident and emergency departments in the major Dublin hospitals. The two ambulance services, those of Dublin Corporation and the Eastern Health Board, are not properly co-ordinated. We need that co-ordination put in place immediately.
The Mater and Beaumont hospitals, which are located in densely populated areas, at present take 50 per cent of ambulance calls especially from elderly, who frequently require the services of both hospitals. This means that both hospitals are subjected to constant incredible pressure.
There is something inherently wrong when the Minister for Health makes funds available to address bed shortages on the one hand and further substantial funds for the third consecutive year to shorten waiting lists in circumstances in which both problems are interlinked and incapable of separate resolution. It is imperative that a serious attempt be made to address the problem on a Dublin-wide basis. While the Department of Health has allocated £8 million to reduce waiting lists, separate new waiting lists are developing because local hospital managements are cancelling elective-surgery patients' admissions. Those patients go on to the waiting lists or return as emergencies to the hospitals that have cancelled their admissions. Local managements are also refusing to accept responsibility for managing the accident and emergency departments. They pass the buck to the Department of Health, who pass it back and, as a consequence, the service to the public suffers.
The Department of Health is to be commended for proposing a non-confrontational forum within which to examine the accident and emergency difficulties in hospitals but it is important that staff participate so that the onus is placed on the Minister and his Department to convince them that this will not be just another talking shop.
There is a critical need to evaluate the number of beds available, and put in place a mechanism for ensuring that accident and emergency patients are divided among available beds, together with the co-ordination of all services to ensure movement and removal of patients in order to free-up urgently needed acute beds. It is unacceptable that patients have to wait up to 48 hours on beds, trolleys and armchairs in hospitals such as the Mater, Beaumont, the Meath and others. It is also unacceptable that nurses must work in such conditions and take abuse because of overcrowding.
The Minister must act quickly to avoid any extension of the dispute to other Dublin acute hospitals. Nurses become very distressed watching the pain and agony of patients, are subjected to verbal and other abuse and pressure, even at times assault, from agitated relatives demanding why their loved one is not being admitted. All of us agree that nursing staff do marvellous work. It is unfair that they should be the victims of the inefficiencies and inadequacies of the Eastern Health Board and the Department of Health.
