PATIENTS IN some elderly care facilities run by the Health Service Executive (HSE) are being put to bed as early as 4pm and 5pm because of staff shortages, it was claimed yesterday.
Dave Hughes, deputy general secretary of the Irish Nurses’ Organisation, said there were also huge gaps in physiotherapy and recreational activities for these elderly residents, again due to short staffing.
An unpublished report commissioned by the HSE last November from a three-person review group, of which Mr Hughes was a member, found 763 staff needed to be appointed immediately to a range of healthcare facilities, including elderly care units and acute hospitals, he said, in order to eliminate “an unacceptable level of risk to patients and staff”.
The report looked at independent reviews of staffing levels carried out at 61 healthcare facilities, some dating back to 1998, and found only one – in the Aran Islands – had been fully implemented. It made recommendations in relation to increased staffing levels at 57 of the 61 facilities and found four of them, including Kerry General Hospital, had such a complex range of staffing problems it referred them to a high-level group. Kerry General was estimated to be short at least 100 staff.
It found the six facilities most urgently in need of extra staff were St John’s Hospital in Enniscorthy, a unit for the elderly which it says needs 11 extra nurses and four extra healthcare assistants; St Joseph’s Hospital in Ennis, also a care unit for the elderly which it says requires 21 extra nurses and 75 extra healthcare assistants; St Camillus’s Hospital, Limerick, again an elderly care facility, which it says needs seven extra nurses and 13 extra healthcare assistants; St Patrick’s Hospital, Carrick-on-Shannon, a unit for the elderly which it says needs four extra nurses and two extra healthcare assistants; Cregg House, Sligo, a unit for those with intellectual disability, which it says needs 15 more nurses; and Mooreabbey in Kildare, also a unit for those with intellectual disability, which the report said needed 15 extra nurses.
These six facilities, which are either HSE-run or HSE-funded, were rated highest priority for extra staffing after the number of medication errors and slips, trips and falls by patients, injuries reported by staff and complaints made by relatives of patients over a five-year period were looked at. Mr Hughes said staffing shortages correlated with higher levels of all of these problems.
Among the acute hospitals where staff shortages were highlighted by the review group were the Mid Western Regional Maternity Hospital in Limerick, which it found was short 16 midwives and four healthcare assistants, and Cavan General Hospital, where it was found four additional children’s nurses were required in the emergency department, something Mr Hughes said was consistent with the recommendations of the report into the death in 2004 of nine-year-old Frances Sheridan.
Mr Hughes said the review group presented its report to the HSE on April 8th and recommended it be implemented as a matter of priority over the next three years. He said the cost involved would be about €36 million. There has been no official response yet from the HSE to its recommendations, he said.
With him on the review group were Dr Siobhan O’Halloran, the HSE’s nursing services director, and Rosemary Ryan of the Irish Public Bodies Mutual Insurances.
The HSE said last night a draft of the review group’s report had been received and is under consideration. “The economic context within which the review body operated deteriorated significantly since it commenced work. In addition, the recent Government moratorium on public service recruitment and associated issues, which came into effect on March 27th, 2009, places significant challenges on the HSE through balancing service requirements with the provisions of the moratorium, which are immutable,” it said.
It added that it recognised there was a critical timeframe attaching to the report and said it would keep the INO informed of decisions on this matter.