Some 900 nurses are being balloted for industrial action at Dublin’s Beaumont hospital over a decision by management to put extra beds on wards throughout the hospital to alleviate overcrowding in the emergency department.
Nurses attending the annual conference of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) in Trim this afternoon voted unanimously in favour of a motion supporting their colleagues at Beaumont who are currently being balloted. Their industrial action, if it proceeds, will take the form of a work to rule, during which nurses will focus on direct patient care rather than answering phones or attending meetings with management.
The result of their ballot will be known on May 20th.
A spokesman for Beaumont hospital, which will close 52 beds over the next two weeks in a bid to cut costs, said it had discussed the move with the INMO before it began implementing it last month. “It’s part of the hospital’s escalation policy in relation to the emergency department. It provides that where there are more than 10 people waiting for admission that up to 10 beds can be erected elsewhere in the hospital and then they get taken down again the moment the overcrowding clears,” he said.
He confirmed extra beds had been put on wards about six times since the policy was adopted on April 12th. An extra three beds were put on wards last night, he said.
“It is intended to help focus the attention of people throughout the hospital on the need for early discharge of patients where appropriate, and it seems to be working,” the hospital’s spokesman added.
Moire Wynne, an IMNO nursing representative at Beaumont, told the conference the hospital was closing beds on the one hand while placing extra patients behind doors in wards to alleviate overcrowding in the emergency department on the other. This was unsafe for patients who would have no dignity or privacy in these extra beds.
Paddy Gallagher, another nurse in Beaumont, said it was crazy people were bailing out the bankers and even developers who were taking private jets to Morocco for the weekend and sending our health minister to New Zealand for a few days at a cost of over €30,000 while people were on trolleys. He suggested scrapping ministerial Mercs to save money rather than closing beds in Beaumont.
Nora Cunningham, a nurse from Limerick, said nurses there had stopped the placing of extra beds on wards at Limerick Regional Hospital . When it was tried, beds were so close together, without any curtain separating them, that one patient actually vomited on top of another patient next to him, she said.
“Mary Harney, you should be ashamed you allow our health managers run our hospitals in this manner,” she said.
The conference, which is being attended by over 300 delegates, will be addressed by Ms Harney tomorrow.
Earlier today delegates supported a motion calling on members to reject the Croke Park pay deal on the basis that it did not guarantee there would be no further cuts and would lead to a loss of thousands of hospital beds and front line health service staff over the next few years. The more than 40,000 INMO members will begin balloting on the pay proposals next week.