IMO rejects call to draft in surgeons for emergency work

The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has rejected a call for surgeons to be drafted in to help out in overcrowded emergency departments.

The union said the proposal from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) was neither practical nor feasible and failed to address the role of bed shortages in causing hospital overcrowding.

Redeployed

INMO chief executive

Liam Doran

said surgeons whose waiting lists were cancelled should be redeployed into busy hospital emergency departments.

"If theatre lists are abandoned surely consultant surgeons could be asked to assist with the flow of patients in busy emergency departments," Mr Doran, who co-chairs a group overseen the emergency department taskforce, told the Sunday Business Post.

However, IMO vice-president John Duddy said that the fundamental problem was that overcrowding was happening in hospitals with insufficient bed capacity and this was manifesting itself in the crisis in emergency departments.

“The problem is directly linked to a shortage of hospital beds and rolling theatre closures. Having surgeons down at the emergency department won’t make any difference to the efficiency of those departments when there are no beds to transfer the patients to and insufficient theatre time to operate on them.

“What we should be focusing on is the critical resources to ensure that the surgeons have the facilities and resources they need to do the job they are trained for so that patients can be treated and moved on through the system.”