Skeletal staff at MUH puts patient welfare at risk – Chambers

Áine Ryan

THE HSE and Minister for Health, Simon Harris, must explain why Mayo University Hospital’s A&E department was left with a skeletal nursing staff on Thursday and Friday last (August 18 and 19). This is the view of Fianna FΡil Deputy Lisa Chambers, who has said ‘it was very worrying to receive reports of only three nurses working in the emergency department’ on Thursday last and ‘only two on Friday’ due to ‘a number of nurses being out sick’.
“It appears there was no cover available to deal with the nurses who were out sick, leaving what can only be described as a skeletal nursing staff at one of the country’s busiest emergency departments,” Deputy Chambers said.
She observed that the pressures on MUH’s emergency department had been compounded by the closure of Roscommon’s A&E by the last government, increased pressures on Galway’s hospitals and an ageing population in the region.
“The HSE and MUH are very well aware of this. It was not that long ago I highlighted the fact that there were queues reaching out to the café area in the hospital as patients overflowed from the emergency department,” she said.
Ms Chambers continued: “Given the hospital and the HSE are aware of the huge demands on MUH emergency department and past failings in terms of treating patients in a timely manner, it is inexplicable that a situation would be allowed to arise where only three nurses were present on one day and only two the following day.
“There needs to be staff available to cover nurses when they are off sick. Clearly this is putting patient welfare and safety at risk and these are totally unacceptable conditions for staff to work in. How can those nurses working on those days be expected to cope with such a workload?”
“I also want assurances that this will not happen again,” added Deputy Chambers.
The HSE had not responded to Mayo News questions at the time of going to press last night.
 
Consultant cover
THIS latest crisis at the Castlebar facility coincided with the alarming revelation that MUH does not have 24-hour cover by a consultant. Fianna FΡil’s spokesman on health observed that the people of rural Ireland should have the same rights to emergency cover as their urban counterparts. Deputy Billy Kelleher discovered through a parliamentary question that ten of the country’s 29 emergency department did not have 24/7 consultant cover.
“So if you downgrade further our emergency cover across the country in terms of hospital departments, well then you’re going to leave huge areas without emergency cover. And all in all, elective surgery is something that people plan for – emergency cover is something that is unplanned, so therefore you have to have available and on standby, adequate services to deal with emergencies,” Mr Kelleher said.
Responding, Mr Fergal Hickey, a Sligo consultant and officer with the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine, said: “We need to face up to the fact that we have too many emergency departments, so we need to reduce those numbers so that they can be staffed at the appropriate level.”