Nursing staff plan to demonstrate outside the gates of Dublin's Peamount Hospital today over plans by management to change the hospital's function.
Management have drawn up a long-term strategy to phase out the treatment of TB patients by 2008. Beginning next January, the plan is to transform the hospital from primarily a chest hospital to a rehabilitation one.
The Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) has expressed concern that this could lead to TB patients having to present at acute hospitals, and in so doing increasing the risk of spreading the disease to other patients in A&E departments.
Staff say they feel there is huge scope for the development of chest medicine at Peamount, and that it should be allowed to continue to develop alongside rehabilitation facilities.
"It will be the patient who will lose out, and the expertise gained over many years in Peamount will be lost," said a member of staff who didn't want to be named.
The INO has urged management to scrap its plans. The hospital has said the manner in which change will be implemented has yet to be worked out, but it will be done in such a way as not to put other patients at risk.