Nurses are preparing to go on strike over unsafe working conditions due to overcrowding in our hospitals.
The health service is at breaking point with record numbers waiting to get seen by doctors on trolleys in hospital corridors.
And health chiefs - and even Health Minister Stephen Donnelly - have warned that things are likely to get worse before they get better.
Nurses are concerned that the cramped health settings they are working in are unsafe for both patients and staff and they are now threatening to go on strike to highlight this point.
Meanwhile, Mr Donnelly, yesterday (FRI) told reporters that he is listening to what nurses are saying and he has promised the Government will act.
INMO (Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation) General Secretary, Phil Ní Sheaghdha, said: “The Executive Council of the INMO, made up of working nurses and midwives, have today taken the decision to begin a period of consultation on a campaign of industrial action in pursuance of safe staffing levels that are underpinned with legislation and clinical facilitation in all hospitals to ensure a safe skills mix.
“What has transpired this week in our hospitals was totally avoidable.
“For too long nurses and midwives have been warning that we were going to see an overcrowding blackspot in January unless serious and meaningful action was taken.
“While many will try to laud the fact that we have seen a decrease of patients on trolleys from 931 to 535, we won’t be part of attempts to justify this as an improvement.
“Nurses and midwives expect and deserve to work in a safe practice environment in which they can deliver the safe and excellent care they are trained to provide.”
INMO President Karen McGowan added: “We will now begin a period of consultation pertaining to industrial action.
“Nurses and midwives are being asked to crisis manage a situation that is of our employers’ own making.
“We know that levels of burnout are at an all-time high.
“We must now take whatever action is deemed necessary to ensure that we do not endure this level of danger in our workplaces in the coming months and years ahead on a continuous replay mode.
“We will now commence a series of information and consultation meetings with members over the next month.”
When asked about the possibility of a nurses’ strike, Mr Donnelly spoke about the need to increase recruitment.
He said: “Safe staffing levels are being rolled out across the country, the INMO quite rightly have said they want to see it faster.
“We all want to see it faster.
“We need to listen very carefully to the nurses and the midwives and be responding to the things that they're saying.
“One of the challenges that some of the hospitals have is they are struggling to hire in some of the hospitals into the EDS into those nursing roles.
“That puts more and more stress on the full-time nurses who are in those roles.
“Really what we need to be doing is working with the HSE, working with individual hospitals to find ways to have permanent health care professionals in those roles because the roles broadly are sanctioned.
“The challenge is recruiting permanently into those roles.
“That's the kind of thing that the emergency department nurses need to be hearing from governments, need to be hearing from the HSE.”
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