Emergency care should be diverted from Beaumont

Members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation are calling on Beaumont Hospital management to advise those seeking to attend the Emergency Department at the hospital to consider other care pathways over the coming days.

This comes as the hospital has seen high levels of overcrowding. 

INMO Industrial Relations Officer, Maurice Sheehan said:

The level of overcrowding in Beaumont is extremely concerning. 

The Emergency Department is currently at full capacity with nurses struggling with overflows of patients who have been admitted. The discharge rates in Beaumont are not keeping up with the admission rates. The union has called for a more focused approach to patient discharge and more frequent consultant-led ward rounds focused on discharging patients. 

The Emergency Department is also understaffed at present. Staff are reporting high levels of burnout and mental exhaustion because of the high levels of overcrowding in the hospital at present. 

INMO members in Beaumont are calling on the hospital management to call on the public to use other avenues such as GPs, minor and rapid injury clinics, and if the situation requires other emergency departments in the city. 

INMO President and ANP in Beaumont Emergency Department, Ms. Karen McGowan added:

Colleagues in Beaumont are under severe pressure. We are having COVID and non-COVID cases presenting to our emergency department today. The staffing levels are inadequate at this moment in time. It is time for management to intervene and put a call out for ambulance bypass, private hospitals in the area to assist and to advise GPs in the area of the seriousness of overcrowding.