Patient safety was paramount in threat of industrial action at Ballyshannon Community Hospital  

The INMO (Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation) have emphatically stated that the delay in transferring residents over to the new community hospital in Ballyshannon which opened on Tuesday, was the overriding safety needs of the residents involved.

“Quite simply you can't leave a patient in a bed if there is no-one to look after them”, Neal Donohue, the regional INMO Industrial Officer said. 

“The nurses advocated for the patients very strongly, they weren’t going to back down and it would allow the patients to benefit with a much safer service that was proposed.” he added.     

The ballot, which was completed on Monday, saw a huge 96% vote in favour of the new proposals, in stark contrast to the 93% who voted initially for Industrial action, mirroring the anger of INMO members felt on the ground. 

The second batch of 26 residents from the Rock Community Welfare Unit were transferred over on Wednesday to the new €36.7million facility.

He also poured cold water on comments made in the media that the decision had already been made last week as the balloting to agree the new recommendations had only finished on Monday.

ABOVE: The new south Donegal/Ballyshannon Community Hospital pictured from the far side of the River Erne. Photo: Thomas Gallagher

He said: “At the end of the day, it is a lovely building but what matters to the patient in the bed, is whether a nurse is available to them. We were also concerned that for significant periods of time especially at night where that would not happen. And if there were people on leave there would be significant gaps in the roster exposing many weaknesses," he said. 

He also suggested that there was no veracity in public comments made by Cllr Micheal Naughton last week, that the Work Relations Commission (WRC) had sided with the HSE.

Mr Donohue explained that the INMO had written to the councillor involved to clarify the matter,

“That is not what conciliation is about”.

He said that the INMO had set out their concerns regarding the new hospital as far back as July of last year where they outlined their concerns of the transfer, the biggest of which being that they did not have a night nurse manager for a 80-unit community hospital.

“That has been resolved and that now makes it much safer and they only had one nursing staff per ward, which meant that at any given time people are entitled to their break. The worry there is that people wouldn't get a break in a 12 and half hour shift, which would be completely unsafe for the workers or if they did take their break, they would have no nurse available for the patients, for significant periods during the night. And that would be totally detrimental to the patient.”

He said that nurse staffing levels had now been increased “and that was the main holdup”.

Adding that there were other planning issues around the calculations about statutory and annual leave “and you have not built in enough cover” and this all fell under “primary legislation” which was required.

“We have a mechanism now to ensure that there is a 20% cover built in and to make sure that the likes of sick leave, maternity leave, even training and anything like that would see enough staff coverage,” he added.

This will see the development of “a nursing bank” to ensure extra availability was there from time to time if required. 

“They were concerned that if they moved over without having all the matters resolved, they would continually run in unsafe circumstances and that the patients would suffer”.

He also explained that the INMO had also done a comparative analysis with the likes of staffing at Sligo, Cork and Dublin “and what was proposed in Donegal and Ballyshannon, we just could not fathom why people in Donegal would be treated any differently”.