More than 5,000 healthcare staff are off this week due to Covid-19.
The surge of Covid infection in communities is having a significant impact on public hospitals, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has warned.
IHCA President Professor Alan Irvine, said staff absences are having a “devastating impact on the delivery of timely care to patients.”
“The vacancies and the shortage of Consultants have resulted in excessive workloads being carried by understaffed medical and surgical teams to the detriment of patients. Unfortunately, there has been no let-up in the workload pressures being faced by this exhausted cohort of staff.”
The IHCA is calling for the government to take action to fill consultant vacancies by ending the pay disparity, where the pay was cut for Consultants appointed after 2012.
The association also urged the public to use a higher degree of caution over the coming weeks given the widespread community transmission of the coronavirus and the resulting increase in hospitalisations.
The Association said it would encourage the 700,000 people yet to receive a third booster vaccine dose to consider doing so in order not only to protect themselves and their families against serious illness, but also to protect those who are at highest risk of harm from Covid-19 and the most vulnerable in society.
Commenting on the impact of the current wave of the pandemic, Mr Irvine said: “Once again, the massive capacity deficits in our public hospitals means that they cannot cope with the high number of people currently presenting at our emergency departments and the surge in Covid activity in hospitals, without having to cancel essential scheduled surgeries, diagnostic investigations, and outpatient appointments. This cannot be the go-to solution to our hospital capacity deficits.
“There is continuous commentary about the health service being under pressure but other than short-term, unsustainable solutions, like cancelling scheduled essential care, not enough is being done to actually increase our public hospital capacity and put in place sustainable solutions to ensure the provision of timely care to patients as needed. Cancelling essential surgeries will only increase record waiting lists even further.
“We recognise the need, after two years of the pandemic, to manage living alongside Covid-19, but at this point we should be in a much better position in terms of having the required hospital capacity to meet the current demand for care. However, in the absence of Government action to increase our public hospital capacity, the public may once again have to play its part in getting this latest surge under control.”
