Call for senior hospital staff to be rostered 24/7 to alleviate crisis

Senior hospital managers and consultants should be rostered seven days a week until the end of the winter to help ease the trolley crisis, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) has said.

This would speed up decision-making and assist the flow of patients through the hospital, congress general secretary Patricia King told the Oireachtas health committee.

Ms King said an additional 1,500 hospital beds were needed along with a sustained investment in long-term care beds to ease overcrowding and meet the challenge posed by an ageing population.

She blamed a contraction of health services during the economic downturn and a flawed “reconfiguration” of hospitals in the mid-west and the northeast for the worst of the overcrowding seen in those regions.

Nearly 50 patients waiting on trolleys for over a day

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Brigid Doherty of advocacy group Patient Focus told the committee overcrowding in emergency departments was leading to a “skeleton service” in hospitals during the winter months and at weekends, and this was leading to adverse events.

She detailed examples, including a man found dead on a hospital corridor “virtual ward”, unborn children whose problems were not picked up and children not being transferred promptly to specialist centres.

Death and injury

Misdiagnoses of illnesses was also taking place, thereby shortening the lives of patients or causing permanent injury, according to Ms Doherty.

Patients were not getting proper meals and staff were not available to help them from the trolley to the toilet.

“These events are not reported in the media unless they can be linked to the daily trolley count. This tends to set the media agenda in a way that is not helpful to patients. It is easy for media to cover issues of quantity but it serves to put the resolution of issues of quality and safety even further down the line.”

It was almost as if the system, with its competing vested interests, was seeking to “maximise the horror” for patients, she said.

Dr Emily O’Connor of the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine said the situation was getting worse. Overcrowding was the “overflow valve” of the healthcare system and was causing significant reputational damage to that system.

Speaking in the Seanad, Minister for Health Simon Harris apologised for the overcrowding at the start of the year but pointed out that overall trolley numbers were down on January 2016.