92% of nurses vote for strike action on Emergency Department crisis

MEMBERS of the Irish Nurses & Midwives’ Organisation working in all of the state’s Emergency Departments have voted overwhelmingly for a campaign of industrial action, including strike action, in protest at continuing overcrowding, inadequate staffing levels and the ongoing compromising of patient care.

Nurses say they have simply had enough of broken promises.

The campaign of industrial action, which will involve strike action, will commence on Tuesday 15 December.

In keeping with the agreed health service protocol, the INMO is providing three weeks’ notice and will be indicating its availability to agree contingency measures.

The INMO Executive Council has ratified a campaign involving all hospital Emergency Departments and each hospital is to establish a strike committee immediately.

Strike action will begin on Tuesday 15 December 2015 and will initially involve action in a number of Emergency Departments on a simultaneous/rolling basis.

Further days of strike action will take place, involving remaining Emergency Departments and again on a simultaneous/rolling basis, in the New Year.

The campaign will include a state-wide strike involving all of the country’s Emergency Departments.

The INMO says:

“The exact location and timing of the strike action, on the first day, will be advised to the Health Service Executive in our formal notice to them. However, the strike action will involve all members – with the exception of a Standby Emergency Response Team – requiring the hospital to effectively go off emergency call.”

The INMO adds:

“This campaign of industrial action is being taken as a last resort and after 10 years of discussions and broken promises. Our members are particularly frustrated at the daily acceptance by those in authority, of ED overcrowding and, in many hospitals, ward overcrowding due to extra trolleys.”

The campaign is seeking:-

• Safe, adequate and consistently available, staffing levels (including recruitment and retention initiatives) for all Emergency Departments;

• Additional, separate nursing staff to look after admitted patients who are on trolleys, thus ensuring the ED nursing staff can ensure safe practice in each Emergency Department;

• The designation of all Emergency Departments as specific places of employment under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act, requiring regular inspections to ensure staff health and well-being;

• Proper, full and 24/7 implementation of agreed escalation policies to minimise overcrowding in both emergency departments and wards.

• The INMO says it is also worth noting that this campaign commences against the background of “ED overcrowding being at record levels despite all of the commitments that it would be reduced”.

The latest figures up to the end of October 2015 confirm:-

• In the first 10 months of this year, almost 80,000 patients admitted for care found themselves on trolleys in Emergency Departments or overcrowded wards;

• In the month of October, almost 8,000 patients admitted for care were on trolleys in Emergency Departments/overcrowded wards;

“Both of these figures represent record levels of overcrowding and confirm that October 2015 was the 15th month in a row for overcrowding to increase resulting in care being compromised on an ongoing basis. The situation is therefore getting worse, not better,” the INMO says.

INMO General Secretary Liam Doran (pictured) adds:

“This action, which will involve strike action, is being taken in recognition that overcrowding will continue requiring special, sustained measures to be introduced in our Emergency Departments to safeguard patient care and the health and well-being of staff.

“INMO members have had enough. We know patients have had enough and it is now up to Government and management to address these issues in dialogue with us if this campaign of strike action is to be avoided.”

Sinn Féin Health spokesperson Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD (pictured) says the industrial action being undertaken by nurses working in emergency departments across Ireland is the inevitable outcome of years of cuts to essential frontline services and “the ever-deteriorating state of our health services” under the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition.

“The health service is in complete chaos and the Government have no one to blame but themselves,” the Sinn Féin TD says.

“What we need is adequate investment to tackle this serious problem. The miserable €18million additional health funding in the Budget for 2016 is a damning indictment of the Governments approach to the health crisis and will do nothing to alleviate the pressures on staff in our hospitals.

“In Sinn Féin’s Budget 2016 proposals, we provided an additional €383million to tackle the crisis in the health system and that is just in Year One.

“We identified a number of areas where we would invest in both additional staff and services that have the potential to alleviate the pressures on emergency departments, in maternity units and across the disability services.

“Sinn Féin is committed to the realisation of a world-class system of universal health care that is accessed on the basis of need, free at the point of delivery, and funded by progressive taxation.”