The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation have called on management in University Hospital Limerick to abide by public statements and cancel all non-urgent elective care in the hospital and to prioritise the clinical needs of the emergency department patients.
This comes as 94 patients are without a bed in the hospital today.
INMO Assistant Director of Industrial Relations, Mary Fogarty said:
Despite public assurances from management at the hospital yesterday that “all but most urgent elective surgery” would be curtailed in Ireland’s most-overcrowded hospital, most elective care continued at the hospital yesterday and today.
It is clear that University Hospital Limerick cannot cope with providing emergency and elective care at the same time. Hospital management must abide by their public statements and actually curtail non-urgent elective care immediately.
INMO members are reporting serious delays in triage and assessment of patients by doctors in the emergency department. Further delays on top of high patients without a bed is compromising care and outcomes for patients.
At a time when everyone else in the country is winding down, it is only getting worse for INMO members and other healthcare workers in UHL. Management must take the extraordinary steps they have publicly promised.