Nursing cover in St Luke's Hospital, the national cancer referral centre, is not meeting patients' needs, management said yesterday.
The Dublin hospital has had to curtail its services further, with the closure of its day ward and the deferral of 280 out-patient appointments next week. This brings to 512 the number of cancer patients whose out-patient appointments have been deferred since the nurses' strike began.
Its chief executive officer, Mr Nicholas Jermyn, said the hospital had expressed concerns that the cover "is not adequate". The INO confirmed it has instructed the local committee that nursing cover should be retained at the current "adequate" levels.
The hospital is working with less than 25 per cent its normal nursing staff, and more than 100 of its 140 beds are not in use.
Three breast-cancer patients who were due to have mastectomies at Waterford Regional Hospital had their operations cancelled as a result of the strike.
The surgeon decided not to admit the patients after the strike committee attached a condition to a theatre request. A nurses' union spokesman, said the cancellations were unnecessary. The incident was being viewed as a serious breakdown in co-operation between the strike committee and the hospital. The surgeon sought to book the theatre for six hours on Thursday and asked the strike committee for guaranteed access. Mr Don Culliton, the INO industrial relations officer for the south east, said the committee agreed to the request but only on condition that "higher priority emergencies" would take precedence.
"We are providing emergency cover without pay and we're trying to address the needs of the patients as they come in. That's all we were trying to do here but there was an exception taken to that," he said. As a result, the theatre was idle on Thursday when the operations could have gone ahead, he claimed.
It is understood the surgeon did not want to prepare the patients for operations which might be postponed.
Surgeons at the Limerick Regional Hospital worked throughout Thursday night to clear a backlog of emergency operations following the rejection by the strike committee of a request to open a second operating theatre, adds Arthur Quinlan in Limerick. Only one of the hospital's seven theatres had been functioning since the strike began.
A member of the strike committee said a second theatre would be staffed in the event of "a life-saving opportunity".