Quality of care is being adversely affected in the country's paediatric emergency departments with children being forced to stay on trolleys in corridors for 24 hours in some cases, the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine (IAEM) warned today.
The association said there has been "significantly worsening" overcrowding at Temple Street and Our Lady's Hospital in Crumlin this winter and it is now at "historically high and dangerous levels".
However, it said the problem of overcrowding is not due to an increase in demand for services as data show admission rates remain at a steady rate.
The association said an increase of 700 per cent in the number of children on trolleys at Our Lady's Hospital in Crumlin has been recorded by clinicians over the last three years. An increase has also been recorded in the number of children leaving the hospital without receiving treatment
Speaking this morning, Prof Ronan O'Sullivan, a consultant in emergency medicine in Crumlin, said overcrowding was an "escalating problem" which is as bad now as in many adult emergency departments.
The real reason for overcrowding was a lack of access to inpatient beds. "There's been significant cuts in beds in the paediatric hospitals - and that's the primary reason for this," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland.
The Department of Health said there had been a surge in influenza and respiratory problems in young and old people in recent days, affecting emergency departments nationwide. A spokeswoman said Dublin hospitals are working closely together so children can be admitted quickly where necessary. “Children who are waiting to be admitted are getting the full range of specialist care they need while in the emergency department,” she added
Prof O'Sullivan said short-term measures to tackle seasonal problems such as flu and respiratory infections would go some way in tackling the problem.
The recent surge in respiratory infections was "eminently predictable", he said. "These are short term illnesses and they benefit from short-term admissions. It's a lack of isolation facilities for things like the flu, for respiratory illnesses that we don't have and, in actual fact, a bit of lateral thinking in relation to how we admit children will actually help. An increase in short-stay unit admissions would be particularly helpful."
The IAEM has outlined a number of "immediate and cost-effective" measures is said would alleviate the problem of overcrowding.
They include the reopening of hospital beds in hospitals for a short period each winter to accommodate increased demand for short-term care of children with infectious disease, resourcing the development of 'observation medicine' and clinical decision units to accommodate these patients, and the incorporation of performance measures from paediatric emergency departments into a national data set for consideration when formulating solutions to overcrowding.
"What we're looking for is some lateral thinking in relation to reopening some beds - not opening all beds all of the time but opening some beds for an adequate amount of time during the winter," Prof O'Sullivan said.
"If the system could be resourced to develop short-stay units- and that is a relatively low capital cost - if the system could be resourced to do that then there's excellent evidence there that that's a cost-effective and efficient way of admitting patients and in particular, children."