Hospital staff warn current crisis will kill people…

Hospital staff warn current crisis will kill people and overworked nurses are burnt out

Staff working in Ireland's hospitals have warned that the current state of the health service is going to kill people unless action is taken.

Overworked nurses are also feeling like "nobody cares" about their role in maintaining services and how they are treated. And one said there is an "element of neglect" in healthcare because patients are not being seen soon enough.

A consultant surgeon in one of the country's regional hospitals has said the crisis has reached a tipping point that cannot be maintained. Edward, who has been practising for 30 years as a consultant surgeon, told RTE's Liveline said that there is a "threat to the health of Irish people.

He said: "I think there has been such a significant deterioration in the last three or four weeks that there needs to be immediate redress. The problem is we can no longer deliver safe care in the emergency departments. What's happened over the last few weeks has been extremely distressing. People will die because of this. It has reached a tipping point beyond which we can actually manage.

"We as doctors can't actually examine people standing up or in a chair. The Minister for Health needs to recognise that there is a threat to the health of the Irish people, particularly the elderly. What we need to do is have some remedies to this. There has to be a line of communication, a recognition that this is a real problem.

"This problem will kill people over the next couple of weeks unnecessarily. I have never seen the situation in such a terrible state. It boils down to management and the HSE structure. We're at the situation now almost where we can't do emergency surgery in our public hospitals because there's no bed for the patient to return to."

Josephine is an agency nurse and warned that staff are now suffering from severe burnout. She revealed that many nurses who would have worked within the HSE but were employed privately have yet to receive the €1,000 COVID recognition payment.

She said: "I speak for myself and a small number of my colleagues. We're agency nurses. For a very long time we felt a sense of loyalty and would have worked many overtime shifts due to shortage of staff in hospitals. At this point in time we feel we've been completely abandoned. Nobody cares about us at all. The pandemic payment, the recognition payment, we're now January 23 and we still haven't received that payment.

"The situation is, we have been told by the agency that they have been given our names because we were employed to work within the HSE so we are due the payment. The process has been handed over to an independent body to "quicken" the process. I would have sent four emails to the independent body and they don't even respond. So myself and my colleagues have decided we won't be doing anymore agency overtime. We're going to put our own health first, we are so tired. And there is an overall feeling that just nobody cares. It's "go in and get on with the job".

Josephine said that health staff "don't need a clap" and that they do the job because they really care. But they have now hit a breaking point.

She said: "We have now hit a point where we're actually losing that empathy because nobody cares about us. Nobody cares that we don't get toilet breaks in a timely fashion. That we don't get to have our tea break or our lunch breaks in a timely fashion. We don't get out of work on time. It's just work overload on every single shift. We are trying to provide care with dignity and respect, and we can't do it. It's really dangerous. We know there is an element of neglect in the A&E department because we can't get to them [patients] in a timely fashion."

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