INMO Launches New Initiative

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has launched a new initiative entitled 'Ward Watch'.

This new initiative will be published on a daily basis, in tandem with the long standing Trolley Watch, resulting in a new combined overall measure of hospital overcrowding.

The Ward Watch findings will confirm that a number of hospitals are regularly overcrowding their inpatient wards. This practice compromises the care of all patients on those wards due to an increased risk of cross infection and inadequate staffing while also minimising the dignity and privacy to these patients.

The figures will also confirm that progress has been made, in a number of hospitals, in reducing the number of patients on trolleys. However, in others, the level of overcrowding continues leading to an overall national increase in the number of patients placed on trolleys/beds in inappropriate care environments.

The INMO remains fundamentally opposed to the placing of additional beds/trolleys, above the stated complement, on any inpatient ward/unit.

(CD)