Tullamore nurses to strike next month

Nurses working in the Emergency Department (ED) at the Midlands Regional Hospital, Tullamore are set to go on strike next month in protest at what the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) says is the government’s failure to tackle the overcrowding crisis.

The emergency department in Tullamore is one of seven chosen by the INMO to go on strike on Tuesday, December 15, after over 90% of emergency department nurses voted for industrial action. The industrial action will take the form of two-hour rolling work stoppages. This means that, with exception of a stand-by emergency response team in the event of a major incident, Tullamore hospital will be off emergency call.

INMO general secretary Liam Doran says that the decision to strike “is being taken as a last resort after 10 years of discussions and broken promises”.

“It is necessary as a direct result of the failure of government and health service management over many years to recognise this overcrowding crisis and to allocate the necessary resources to properly address it.”

“Our members will no longer tolerate having to go to work every day and face constant overcrowding where both the care of patients and the health and wellbeing of staff is compromised without anyone in authority seeming to recognise the consequences,” the union boss adds.

Figures released by the organisation earlier this month revealed that in the first ten months of this year 2,236 patients were treated on trolleys in Tullamore. While this represents a decrease of just over 1,000 for the same period last year, it is the still the second highest figure since records began in 2,006.