A protest will take place outside University Hospital Galway this Saturday 21 January at 1pm calling on the HSE to properly staff the Emergency Department.
Organiser of the protest, Luke Silke, said that anyone who has been in the ED at the hospital lately will know how shocking the situation is.
He said a few months ago the INMO threatened to ballot for industrial action if the new temporary ED was not properly staffed prior to opening.
“I have submitted questions to the Minister for Health to get clarity on this – but my suspicion is that staffing levels haven’t been increased appropriately.
“We cannot persist with a situation where staff are being redeployed from other units to the emergency department to make up for the shortfalls.”
Mr Silke said nurses on the ground are enduring enormous stress and the idea of emigration is becoming more and more attractive to new graduates.
“I’ve focused my research on the month of November 2022 for which we have fairly detailed statistics,” he said.
“The HSE has told me that in UHG in November the average wait time in A&E was 7.5 hours. This was worse than any other hospital in the Saolta group, comprising Mayo, Sligo, Letterkenny and Portiuncula.
“The total trolley count, as recorded each morning in November at 8am, stood at 823. This was the fourth highest monthly trolley count in the entire country, with only Limerick, Cork and Tallaght coming in with higher counts.”
The protest will take place outside UHG on the Newcastle Road at 1pm on Saturday.
