Manager at Tipperary hospital is 'dreading' the winter but says maternity services are safe

The maternity services at Tipperary University Hospital in Clonmel are safe, the hospital’s General Manager Maria Barry has stated.

She was responding to a recent statement by Deputy Michael Lowry that the situation at the Clonmel hospital had gone “beyond crisis point”, with midwives warning that staff shortages were causing risks to the safety of women and their babies.

In a letter sent to hospital management, Grainne Walsh, Industrial Relations Executive of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), also said that the organisation’s members working in the hospital’s maternity department couldn’t be held accountable or responsible for any adverse event that might occur, as a result of the department being insufficiently staffed with midwives.

Maria Barry said that four new staff had recently been appointed to the maternity services, as well as a new Director of Midwifery, Margaret Dowling.

“Things will begin to change,” she said.

Responding to the INMO’s TrolleyWatch figures, released last week, and which showed that 235 patients were on trolleys at Tipperary University Hospital during November, Maria Barry admitted that the figure was high, although it wasn’t as high as other years.

November figures for the four pre-Covid years, from 2016 to 2019, ranged from a low of 400 to a high of 680.

The Hospital Manager stated that this lower figure was probably an impact of the hospital’s 40-bed unit that had opened in 2020.

However, when there were patients on trolleys, a bed capacity issue at the hospital still existed, she said. She admitted that there were patients who had to spend three to four days on a corridor, and in such cases there was “no dignity and no respect” for the patient.

Ms Barry said that in due course a total of 30 additional beds would be provided at the hospital, probably towards the latter end of next year.

She said that the number of patients on trolleys could be attributed to the ten per cent increase in admissions to the hospital’s emergency department (ED) this year. There was an increase of between eight and ten per cent in this figure each year, and on a daily basis the average figure was 100.

By the end of the year she expected that there would be a total of 44,000 presentations to the hospital’s ED department, compared to 39,849 last year.

The hospital had also noted an increase in the number of older people presenting to the ED.

Older people often required admission and it took them longer to recover, so their stay in hospital was longer.

A lot of staff worked on assessments in the ED and the hospital tried to avoid admitting people where possible.

Ms Barry said she was “dreading” the winter, a season that is always challenging for hospitals, and it wasn’t getting any easier.

However, she said that the hospital was being developed all the time, with a good investment in people and resources in the last five years, and the staff were working really hard to make a difference.

She said that recruiting staff was a big challenge and they were relying on “a very international community” to support the services.

Maria Barry said that almost 1,200 people were employed at Tipperary University Hospital and it was very much part of the community.