TOP doctors in hospitals across the country have been ordered to work over the St Patrick’s Day bank holiday in a bid to ward off overcrowding, HSE boss Bernard Gloster has revealed.
Last month, new Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said she was furious at the lack of senior decision-making doctors working in our hospitals over bank holiday weekends.
Overcrowding is a major issue in hospitals at weekends[/caption]
Overcrowding in Irish hospitals tends to spike over the weekend when there are fewer senior doctors on site to approve the discharge of patients.
The lack of discharges leads to overcrowding with figures showing the number of patients left to be treated on trolleys in our hospitals is highest on a Monday after the weekend.
This situation gets particularly bad over a bank holiday weekend.
For example, over the St Brigid’s bank holiday in February the number of patients without a bed rose from 253 on Saturday morning up to 617 on Tuesday morning.
Only 10 per cent of hospital consultants were working in hospitals over the St Brigid’s Day bank holiday weekend.
Minister Carroll MacNeill has ordered the HSE to bring in senior doctors to work on site over weekends to ensure our hospitals function on a seven day basis.
HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster today revealed that senior consultants are being rostered in over the St Patrick’s Day bank holiday.
He said: “For St Patrick’s weekend, every hospital in the country has now returned to me a rostered arrangement as opposed to just the on-call.
“They also have on-call but a rostered arrangement to give a better spread of decision making across emergency medicine, across in house medicine which is where the biggest demand is.”
The HSE boss said he put the call out to hospitals to ensure consultants are in over the bank holiday weekend because “we had clearly slipped since Christmas in the progress we had been making” in tackling the overcrowding issue in hospitals.
Mr Gloster admitted there are “far too few rostered at weekends” but this issue is now being addressed.
The change will see consultants working across weekends with some senior doctors working until up to 10pm at night.
There are now 2,700 consultants on the new public only contract which includes extended evening and weekend hours.
‘CRITICAL MASS’
The HSE boss said that the build-up of doctors on the new contract coupled with a clause in the old 2008 contract for weekend work has created a “critical mass” of doctors that keep patients flowing throughout weekends.
This comes as healthcare workers issued the HSE with notice that they will be taking industrial action in their row over staffing numbers.
Thousands of healthcare workers in the Forsa trade union and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation have voted for a go-slow which will take place on March 31.
The unions claim the HSE’s ‘Pay and Numbers strategy’ which imposes fixed employment figures across the health service is leaving posts vacant and hospitals understaffed.
