Nurses begin protests over A&E conditions

Overcrowding in hospital accident and emergency departments is getting worse despite the announcement by the Minister for Health last November of a 10-point plan to tackle the problem, the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) said yesterday.

The INO has called on patients, trade unionists and community groups to join in a series of lunchtime protests, starting today, aimed at highlighting the overcrowding problem.

INO general secretary Liam Doran said that in the first six days of April there was an average of 326 people on trolleys compared with 256 at the beginning of February, despite the fact that patient numbers generally fell at the end of winter. The INO will hold protests at the Mater hospital in Dublin, Cork University Hospital and Roscommon General Hospital from 1pm to 1.30pm today.

Protests will be held in other hospitals later in the month.

Patients Together, which has campaigned on the problems of A&E units, yesterday urged the public to join the protests.

Mr Doran said that the INO would hold a special session on the accident and emergency crisis at its annual conference next month and that the organisation was "ruling nothing in or out" if there was no Government reaction to its campaign.

The INO is demanding a definite timeframe for the full and continuous implementation of the Government's 10-point accident and emergency plan.

The organisation also wants definite timeframes and funding commitments for the introduction of the 3,000 additional acute hospital beds, the 5,000 non-acute beds and the primary care units promised by the Government in the 2001 health strategy.

Mr Doran said that everyone had heard about the 10-point plan of Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney, but that no-one had seen much of it on the ground and that patients had experienced very little benefit.

He said that initially the Department of Health indicated that the benefits of the plan "would be witnessed by March, but that now it seemed that they may not be evident until December 12 months".

Speaking at the campaign launch, Dublin accident and emergency nurse Elaine Kenny said the problem had now "gone beyond trolleys" and that patients were now often on chairs for 24 hours.

INO protests: schedule

Today: Cork University Hospital, Mater hospital, Dublin and Roscommon General Hospital.

Thursday, April 14th: Tallaght Hospital, Dublin, Cavan General Hospital and Mayo General Hospital.

Tuesday, April 19th: St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin and Limerick Regional Hospital.

Thursday, April 21st: Mercy Hospital, Cork, Letterkenny General Hospital, Our Lady of Lourdes, Drogheda and Beaumont Hospital, Dublin.

Tuesday, April 26th: Naas General Hospital, University College Hospital Galway, Tralee General Hospital and Wexford General Hospital.

Thursday, April 28th: St Columcille's Hospital, Loughlinstown and Connolly hospital, Dublin.