This article is from page 20 of the 2011-09-27 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 20 JPG
A SECOND work stoppage will take place in the Emergency Department of the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick this week as an ongoing dispute between nurses and the Health Services Executive (HSE) looks set to continue.
The dispute, which centres around budget cuts in Ennis, Limerick and Tipperary hospitals, since the reconfiguring of emergency services in the region last year, saw nurses down tool for three hours last Wednesday.
This week marks an escalation in the action as an extra hour has been added onto the time for the work stoppage by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) with the stoppage due to take place from 8.30am until 12.30pm.
The INMO have restated that they stand ready to treat any emergency cases that presents from Clare during the work stoppage and will not be putting patient safety at risk through their actions. The nurses union will have a skeleton staff in place to manage any emergencies that may take place.
Since reconfiguration any Clare emergency instances in which require an ambulance, such as car accidents and heats attack, are redirected to Limerick. As well as this any general admissions to the emergency room between 8pm and 8am must be made in Limerick and not in Ennis.
The INMO have declined to con- firm or deny whether these actions will spread to the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Ennis in the coming weeks.
The organisation have blamed the moratorium on the recruitment of registered nurses, the closure of 100 beds in the acute hospital services in the Clare and Limerick region as well as the failure of the reconfiguration process to transfer all day surgery to Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s Hospitals for the work stoppage.
“It is simply not possible for this hospital to continue to provide regional services in surgery, trauma and emergency with further reduced budgets, closed beds and approximately 70 nursing posts unfilled,” said Clare INMO spokesperson Mary Fogarty.
The organisation also claims that some € 13 million in investment, which they say was promised to Ennis, Limerick and Tipperary as part of the reconfiguration process, has never materialised.