Short staffing and high levels of Covid-19 are putting ‘severe pressure’ on nurses and midwives at University Hospital Galway.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation have called for non-urgent electives to be rescheduled at the hospital after 70 patients waited on trolleys on Friday.
This is the highest level of overcrowding recorded at the hospital since 2019.
INMO Industrial Relations Officer, Anne Burke, said that as well as high levels of overcrowding at UHG, there are also dozens of patients in the hospital with Covid.
“Many beds are currently closed in University Hospital Galway because of the impact COVID is having on the operations of the hospital,” she said.
“Each department and ward is under significant pressure with nurses being redeployed at a significant rate.”
Ms Burke called for hospital management to cancel all non-urgent elective procedures, as safe patient care ‘must be a priority’.
“This level of overcrowding in Galway and indeed across the country in the middle of July is not normal and should not be treated as such. Hospital management and the HSE need to take short, medium and long-term action.”
