A well-known Donegal doctor has told how nurses are breaking down in tears under the pressure of coping with the current overcrowding crisis in our hospitals.
Some 578 patients were again waiting on trolleys and wards in Irish hospitals this morning as the A&E overcrowding crisis shows no sign of ending.
A total of 406 people are being treated on trolleys in hospitals across the country today with 172 waiting on wards, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation.
One doctor yesterday described how nurses are suffering burn out while trying to work in the “battlezone” like conditions in A&E.
Dr Gerry Lane, who works in Letterkenny General Hospital told RTE: “I have had nurses literally crying on me in the last several days.
“I’ve had senior nurse managers almost in tears at four o’clock on Sunday morning when things were going particularly bad and as you walk around here you see these people with whom I’ve worked- and I’m very proud of the people I’ve worked with they are fantastic – and their shoulders and down, their faces are down and they are completely overwhelmed.
“On Sunday morning there were 24 people in the emergency department with the waiting room only having one or two people sitting in it but the interior was like a battlezone.”
“Our nurses here are amongst the most sterling people I’ve ever worked with and I’ve worked all over the world but they are being beaten down.
“I’m losing members of staff and there are people who are no longer willing to take on additional duties. I can see the signs of burn out.
“I see senior nurses coming in an hour ahead of shift and then staying and hour afterwards and that kind of superhuman effort is only sustainable for a short period of time and then they will burn out.”
Dr Lane, who also works with the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine, said his hospital is completely full and having to wait hours just to be seen.
He said: “We’ve put patients everywhere we possibly can.
“The hospital is so completely full, all surgery has actually been ceased here, with the exception of caesarean sections, and the only day service activity that is happening here are angiograms, which are ongoing, but that’s to assist people who are currently in beds expedite leaving the hospital and moving on.
“So the entire hospital is on a battle footing, as it were, and the entire hospital is bent towards trying to get the situation under control.
“But it isn’t really all about the staff. The staff are wonderful, and they are burning out, but it is really about the poor patients.
“Now, the HSE standards are that 95 per cent of patients who attend an emergency department should be out of there within six hours, and that zero per cent of patients should be there for more than nine hours.”
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