Striking nurses at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, have been asked to extend their emergency duties following claims by a consultant that doctors were not able to cope with extra work.
It is understood that hospital management last night requested that nurses administer intravenous drips, which they have not been doing since the strike started. The request was sent by fax last night to the Department of Health, the Irish Nurses Organisation, the hospital's nurses' strike committee and the Health Service Employers' Agency. Meanwhile, non-consultant doctors at the hospital last night backed the claim by Dr Roisin Healy, an accident and emergency consultant, that it was "absolutely inevitable" mistakes would occur and patients would not get full care if the strike continued.
Doctors at the hospital contacted by The Irish Times would not allow their names to be published, and said hospital management had told them not to speak to the media.
A parent with a child in the hospital who contacted The Irish Times said his wife had to feed their six-month old baby son who has a bronchiolitis. Mr Seamus O'Rahilly said he did not want to criticise nurses, "but the children there seem to be suffering and the doctors are worked to the bone".
A spokeswoman for the hospital nurses' strike committee insisted nurses were feeding patients.
Dr Healy said there were "very significant difficulties" in the hospital "and the medical staff feel that they cannot currently provide emergency service to a medically acceptable standard". She said doctors were doing many nursing duties, including inserting intravenous drips. "The doctors who have become relatively de-skilled are now having to stab the children and that is causing a lot of mental concern and trauma for the doctors because it's difficult," she told RTE's Morning Ireland yesterday.
However, a spokeswoman for the nurses' strike committee rejected Dr Healy's claims and said the description of doctors stabbing patients was alarmist. She said nurses were working throughout the strike, in some cases proving a higher level of cover than normal, to guarantee patient care would not suffer.
Dr Healy told The Irish Times the care of patients by nurses in the accident and emergency depart was exemplary. She said the word "stab" was a medical term used to describe the action of put ting a needle into a patient's arm.