Doctor warns of crowding in more hospitals

A SENIOR emergency medicine consultant has warned of overcrowding in “almost all hospitals in the State” and says the problem is set to get worse in the autumn and winter.

John McInerney, consultant in emergency medicine at the Mater hospital in Dublin and honorary secretary of the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine, said that August had seen record levels of overcrowding.

This was disquieting given that in the summer there was usually less overcrowding because of reduced hospital activity, he said. The summer period was also associated with fewer sick, complex patients coming into hospitals.

“Hospitals that previously did not have overcrowding, such as St Vincent’s, and some others out in the rest of the country are now seeing overcrowding on a daily basis in their emergency departments. In the past we have had overcrowding in the big teaching hospitals like the Mater or St James’s. It is now reaching almost all hospitals in the State.”

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, he said that if this was the level of overcrowding being experienced in the summer, he feared what was going to happen to emergency departments coming into the autumn.

Dr McInerney said it was good to hear Minister for Health James Reilly say he was going to focus on emergency medicine problems. However, what was needed was for the Department of Health’s new special delivery unit to put in management tools such as full capacity protocols and to make sure recruitment was expedited over the next few weeks.

Dr McInerney said he agreed with the Minister that there should be a focus on the management of hospitals. It was interesting that following the intervention of the Health Information and Quality Authority at Tallaght Hospital over recent weeks, there was now no overcrowding in the emergency department there.

He said if Tallaght Hospital, which had overcrowding in its emergency department for years, could deal with the problem in just a week, it showed that if there was a mindset that emergency overcrowding was unacceptable, then beds would be found on wards.

Dr McInerney also said a census of staff carried out by his association two weeks ago showed there was a shortage of 30 per cent in the number of registrars in emergency medicine.