Updated: 5.38pm
NURSES ARE SET to hold a protest at Naas General Hospital next week to highlight ‘severe overcrowding, staffing shortages and inadequate bed capacity’.
Members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) will hold a protest at the gates of the hospital next Monday (10 November), from 1-2.30pm.
The INMO trolley watch figures for Naas Hospital for October 2014 show a 71% increase in the number of patients waiting on a trolley in the Emergency Department (ED) for a hospital bed in comparison to October 2013.
There was an overall increase of 40% in the number of people waiting on trolleys in Naas ED for the first ten months of 2014, compared to the same time period last year.
Derek Reilly, INMO’s Industrial Relations Officer, said that INMO members at the hospital are “are gravely concerned for the well-being of patients who have to suffer the indignity of being nursed on a corridor for days at a time”.
The levels of overcrowding and staff shortages at Naas General Hospital are now the worst in the hospital’s history. The rise in overcrowding is unprecedented and the HSE has no plan in place whatsoever to deal with this crisis.
Reilly added that the organisation has written to all public representatives in the Kildare region seeking a meeting with them to “see what plans they have to address this problem and bring pressure to bear on the Government to provide adequate funding for Naas Hospital”.
Our members are extremely worried at what lies ahead for the winter months and call upon our local politicians and local representatives to devise an action plan to deal with the crisis in the hospital.
A spokesperson for the HSE said that management at the hospital is currently looking to fill eight nursing posts through the National Recruitment Service and “exploring ways to accelerate the regularisation of a significant number of agency nursing posts at the hospital”.
Originally published: 4.10pm
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