Emergency department nurses vote in favour of strike action

Emergency department nurses across the State have voted overwhelmingly to strike from next month over chronic overcrowding and understaffing.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation says 92 per cent of ED nurses backed the call for nationwide industrial action. Seventy-six per cent of nurses voted in the ballot.

The union plans to take strike action in at least one hospital in each hospital group on Tuesday, December 15th, with further action planned in the New Year. The exception is the University of Limerick hospitals group, where no strike will take place because Limerick hospital has the only emergency in the group.

The union says the industrial action will ultimately involve a nationwide strike involving all of the country’s emergency departments.

Asked what effect the strike would have on patients, INMO general secretary Liam Doran said it would depend on the outcome of talks with health managers over contingency plans.

He admitted there was a potential for “real tragedy” but said it was up to management to ensure this didn’t happen.

Resolving the dispute would require the recruitment of at least another 300 nurses, new health and safety regulations for emergency departments and the enforcement of agreed escalation policies in the event of overcrowding, he said.

“This campaign is also necessary as a direct result of the failure, of Government and health service management, over many years, to recognise this overcrowding crisis and to allocate the necessary resources to properly address it.

“Our members will no longer tolerate having to go to work, every day, and face constant overcrowding where both the care of patients, and the health and wellbeing of staff, is compromised without anyone, in authority, seeming to recognise the consequences.”

Any industrial action will pose a headache for the Government and in particular Minister for Health Leo Varadkar, who has come under fire after incidents of patients spending long periods on trolleys.

Emergency department overcrowding is significantly up this year on last, in spite of the allocation of extra resources. The problem has eased slightly in recent weeks as extra beds are opened for the winter, but there were still 339 patients on trolleys this morning.

The head of the HSE has said it would be a great tragedy if an emerging downward trend in the number of patients on trolleys was knocked off course by industrial action by nurses.

Tony O’Brien said health service management was keen to use the State’s industrial relations machinery to ensure industrial action by members of the INMO did not go ahead.

“We are not going to fall out with nurses. We are going to work with them in recognition that they have a central concern about patient care, as we do.”

Mr O’Brien said the beginnings of a downward projection in the numbers of patients on trolleys in hospital was now emerging.

He said it would be a great tragedy if this trend was knocked off track by any industrial action.