INMO Staff To Protest At SVUH Due To Overcrowding Concerns

Staff members at St Vincent's University Hospital (SVUH) in Dublin are due to stage a protest later today, 02 March.

Members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) are due to take action between 1pm and 2pm due to concerns over repeated overcrowding at the hospital.

Concerns have been raised in the past with hospital management nursing post vacancies, the shortage of nurses in the Emergency Department and ward areas, and the continued practice of admitting additional patients to wards despite these unsafe levels of staffing.

The INMO said members are struggling to provide safe levels of care as on a daily basis as wards are operating at a reduced staffing level, varying between two to six nurses short.

While the organisation has called on the hospital to publicly declare a state of emergency and conduct an independent review of staffing, the management have not agreed to do this.

INMO Industrial Relations Officer, Philip McAnenly, said: "At a meeting this evening, INMO members expressed their frustration with the chronic shortage of nursing posts at St Vincent's Hospital. They are increasingly concerned at the position they find themselves in on a daily basis attempting to deliver safe care.

 "Nurses now call on hospital management to work with them, to immediately curtail services to a safe level and to exhaust all possible options of patient care including referring patients to St Colmcille's Hospital in Loughlinstown and St Michael's Hospital in Dun Laoghaire.

"INMO members are extremely disappointed that they now have to publically protest on this issue less than a month after the ED Agreement was brokered."

The INMO has now requested for the intervention of the Special Delivery Unit (SDU), who will attend St Vincent's on 04 March to examine the hospital's compliance with the agreed escalation policy.

(LM)