A number of hospitals had to cancel elective surgery yesterday as a result of the nurses dispute, the Health Service Executive (HSE) said last night.
It said operations were deferred at Waterford Regional Hospital, at Cavan General Hospital, at Galway's University College Hospital and at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin.
Gerry O'Dwyer of the HSE's National Hospitals Office said non-urgent elective surgery would continue to be cancelled today at Crumlin and a lot of other hospitals were reviewing whether they would have to postpone planned surgery.
He added that while elective work had also been cancelled at Dublin's Mater hospital, this was not related to the dispute.
Meanwhile, elective surgery will resume today at Cavan General Hospital. Amid claims by the Irish Medical Organisation that the HSE was too hasty in cancelling some elective surgery at the hospital yesterday, a HSE spokeswoman in the northeast said additional contingency plans had been put in place to allow all planned surgery to resume this morning.
No outpatient clinics have been cancelled to date.
Mr O'Dwyer said the work-to-rule by 40,000 nurses who are members of the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) and the Psychiatric Nurses Association had resulted in an "across-the-board" slowing down of hospitals, particularly A&E units.
There was congestion in accident and emergency at Cork University Hospital as well as at the Mater, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Limerick Regional Hospital and at Galway's main hospital, he said.
However Liam Doran, general secretary of the INO, said the insinuation by the HSE that there were delays in A&E as a result of the nurses' work-to-rule was groundless and baseless.
"I mean, let's get real here. A&E has had overcrowded units, people on trolleys for the last six years . . . so the HSE's blame game and attempt at pouring guilt on nurses and midwives is pointless," he said.
It was also claimed by the HSE that nurses at Mayo General Hospital were refusing to put security tags on newborn babies.
Furthermore, it was claimed that nurses in the mental health services in east Galway had refused to take a call from a garda about a patient and that nurses in long-stay units were not signing forms to allow residents to withdraw money from their accounts.
The nursing unions disputed these claims.
Mr O'Dwyer said the failure by nurses during the work-to-rule to answer all but emergency calls had created significant difficulties for relatives inquiring about patients. It was also slowing up the discharge of patients, he said.
Gail Buckley, the mother of a six-year-old child with diabetes, said she had telephoned Cork University Hospital yesterday for advice about her child and was told by an operator there was no point in calling as nurses were not answering phones.
She said she was not asked if her call was an emergency. As it turned out, it wasn't.
Mr O'Dwyer's advice to the public continues to be not to attend A&E unless absolutely necessary. They should see a GP instead. "Patients should show up for scheduled appointments but they should be prepared for potential delays . . . if there are cancellations we will contact them," he added.