Connolly Hospital is buckling under the pressure of severe overcrowding
Ireland’s healthcare system has never not been under immense pressure. Reports about overcrowding, never-ending waiting lists, jam-packed A&E, and overworked staff hit the headlines every year. It’s a never-ending cycle, but will things ever improve?
Recent reports confirmed that Connolly Hospital was using sheets to separate their patients from one another. Overcrowding at Connolly Hospital has reached another level with staff being forced to use a family room as a makeshift ward. Staff, who are already overworked and underpaid, have hung up sheets to separate trolleys in the room.
This happens every winter, but why isn’t the Government stepping in?
Why should nurses, doctors, and other hospital staff be forced to resort to these measures?
The makeshift ward didn’t have the proper facilities like call bells or even a bathroom.
The INMO’s Phil Ni Sheaghdha said the conditions are “inhumane”
She told RTÉ’s Claire Byrne: “We’ve been involved with our members in Connolly where they’re saying to us the surge areas that are now being used by patients are so inappropriate.
“We had examples of a gym being repurposed very quickly.
“Sheets from beds being placed between patients, hanging between patients to try and give them some privacy,” she added.
“I mean it’s inhumane,” Ni Sheaghdha said.
“The point is when the HSE do not plan, knowing what happens every winter, this is the type of immediate reactionary solutions that hospitals are trying to find because there is simply isn’t enough capacity,” she stressed.
No patient deserves to be treated in such poor conditions, but the hospital staff also shouldn’t feel pressured to resort to these conditions to care for the public.
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