ONLY EIGHT nurses were on duty at Sligo General Hospital yesterday as members of the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) and nursing colleagues from Siptu staged a one-day strike.
The Health Service Executive (HSE) said there were 180 patients on the wards, of whom 100 were “high dependency”.
The HSE accused the nurses of being “reckless” and of putting the lives of patients at risk by refusing to provide cover. INO representatives, who insisted the action was to highlight the dangers posed to patients by unsafe staffing levels, vowed to escalate their action if the dispute over the ending of temporary contracts was not resolved.
Early yesterday, management at the hospital warned the unprecedented nature of the action might require the transfer of all patients to other facilities, However, a HSE spokeswoman said last evening this had not occurred.
She said 100 patients had been discharged early and were sent home on Wednesday after being medically assessed.
As 240 nurses who were rostered for duty yesterday picketed the main entrances to the hospital, 170 staff, including 58 consultants as well as non-consultant hospital doctors and other non-nursing staff, provided cover on the wards.
Six nurses and two midwives provided an emergency on-call service from one room in the hospital in line with an agreement reached between unions and management.
Noel Treanor, the INO industrial relations officer in the northwest, accused management of trying to “break the strike” and of using bullying tactics after they asked nurses who were on night duty on Wednesday night to remain on duty at 8am when the strike began.
The night nurses were handed a letter saying they were required to remain on duty “until appropriate alternative arrangements are agreed with your union and to ensure that the safety and welfare of the patients in the hospital is maintained”.
None of the night staff acceded to the request, but some were in tears as they left to join their colleagues on the picket line. Local INO official Ann McGowan was cheered when she tore up the letter outside the hospital.
Ms McGowan said INO members who voted by 97 per cent in favour of the strike would be escalating the industrial action, and would be holding further one-day strikes if management do not reverse the recent decision to sack 19 temporary nursing staff.
Management said in a bid to avert the strike it had made a “final offer” on Wednesday which would have involved the re-employment of the some of the temporary staff but this had been rejected.
According to the HSE, 21 elective operations, 10 endoscopy procedures, 31 day-case procedures and 262 outpatient appointments were cancelled, while 17 renal dialysis patients were brought by bus to Galway.
Michael McHugh, chairman of the Sligo branch of the Irish Kidney Association, said while those forced to travel to Galway for dialysis endured hardship as a result they were “100 per cent behind the nurses”.
INO president Sile Dickson addressed the picket line and told them they had drawn a line in the sand and had said “enough is enough”. There were 43,000 members in the INO “and to a man and woman they support you today and will continue to support you”.
