Nurses say they feel vindicated in their stance over patient safety at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick after a report concluded there were problems in the emergency department.
The report from the special delivery unit was issued to nursing unions and the Health Service Executive as part of Labour Relations Commission talks yesterday aimed at resolving the ongoing row which has led to three separate days of work stoppages at the hospital.
Recommendations contained in the report include a bed management system be put in place for timely transfers and discharges, along with reopening of closed wards rather than adding additional beds to existing wards when overcrowding occurs. Nurses have suspended their work stoppages action as the discussions continue.
Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s First Minister Peter Robinson described yesterday’s one-day strike by health and education workers in the North as an exercise in “futility” and a protest which would not “put one more penny on the table” of the Northern Executive. An estimated 1,000 hospital procedures were postponed because of the 24-hour stoppage.