Nurses seek reopening of 140 beds to ease pressure

By Dara Bradley Nurses have demanded the Health Service Executive (HSE) reopens the 140 beds that are closed in Galway City’s two public hospitals, to help alleviate pressure from the Emergency Department, where up to 80 patients endured a night on a trolley in the past three days alone.

An Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) survey on Thursday showed that while the Emergency Department of University Hospital Galway (UHG) suffered chronic overcrowding this week because of an outbreak of flu, including Swine Flu, 140 beds in Merlin Park and UHG hospitals remained closed.

The survey showed that 70 beds are closed in Merlin Park, including 34 medical ward beds, nine in the orthopaedic day ward, as well as a further 27 general beds.

In UHG, there are a total of 62 beds closed, including eight paediatric beds, eight beds in St Mary’s ward, 15 in St Monica’s ward, two Intensive Care Unit beds, 28 beds in St Michael’s ward, as well as one cardiac/thoracic Intensive Care Unit bed.There are also eight beds closed in St Francis nursing home in Newcastle.

But while the beds are lying idle, with many of them closed for several months because of a lack of funding and cutbacks, the Emergency Department is grappling with the overcrowding situation where scores of patients are being forced to endure overnight stays on trolleys in corridors.

The Head of the Emergency Department (ED), John O’Donnell, Consultant in Emergency Medicine at UHG, told the Galway City Tribune late last month that the number of overnight stays in 2010 had by November reached the total of the overnights recorded during the 12 months of the previous year. Mr O’Donnell said the overcrowding crisis of the past three years “hasn’t gone away”.

The INO urged the HSE to re-open the beds immediately in order to alleviate pressure on the Emergency Department.

“These closed beds, which are both acute and continuing care beds, must be reopened to ease the current crisis and to give patients back their dignity,” INO general secretary Liam Doran said in a statement.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.