Hospital Trolleys

mathepac said:
When investigating a NHS hospital some years ago, Gerry Robinson, former TESCO boss from Mayo, drilled down to find out why there were excessive delays for certain operations. He discovered that an operating theatre was closed every Friday. No-one knew why, but it was "custom and practice". Re-opening the theatre solved the problem permanently.

God only knows what wasteful customs and practices obtain within the HSEs. An hour off to cash a cheque anyone? But you're paid by credit transfer now. Ah yes sisters, but custom and practice dontcha know.
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Custom and practice only works one way in the Public Sector; teachers did supervision and substitution for 70 years but then suddenly had to be paid extra for it. Nurses took blood and monitored patients after antibiotics for decades but could suddenly stop.
 
Operating Theaters, as well as MRI Machines, X-Ray Departments and CT Scanners, should be running from 6am to 10pm 6 days a week. A shorter day could be worked Sunday.

Why is it I can get a X-Ray straight away from an A&E department if I have insurance but have to wait weeks if I don't? The people are there. They are getting paid. Why not keep them busy?
 
The NHS solved their trolley problem in 2012. They achieved this by issuing a new NHS dictionary in which the definition of "bed" was changed to include "a trolley is a bed if is is used as a bed". Sounds a bit Irish to me but if Simple Simon thinks he sees this as a path to legendary status, guess what?, the NHS now has a beds crisis:rolleyes:
 
Interestingly and slightly surprisingly some in the media are starting to gently ask the correct questions about the annual January trolley crisis. Could they have read this thread? Probably not, but still it's encouraging that the reasons aren't known only to hospital workers.

http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/p...se-to-a-predictable-hospital-crisis-1.2928017

The truth is that every recent minister for health believes that the interest groups in the healthcare area use and sometimes manipulate real difficulties to agitate for more funding and more staff. One senior official asked last week: how come the “crisis” never hits on December 28th, 29th, 30th.​

http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/k...risis-has-to-be-kept-in-perspective-1.2931665

Those damned winter bugs know nothing about holidays, so the official asks a legitimate question, though lacking the courage to say precisely and out loud what he/she means by it.​

However Kathy Sheridan seems a little hypocritical here in saying the official lacks courage as presumably she does know what the official means but doesn't give her opinion on the reason to readers. It's an odd omission from the column.
 
Not really an odd omission from the Irish Times. You won't get their opinion writers saying anything too critical about the angels that are nurses and doctors - those who cannot be questioned.
Easier to go at the 'system' , the over staffed admin sections or even the politicians.
 
The Irish Times is a left wing newspaper and so rarely criticises unions or unionised employees.

They continue, as does RTE, to use Dickensian terms such as “workers” when referring to the employees of an organisation.
 
Not wishing to be morbid but.

It seems some of those in A&E are people who years ago would be dead before getting there .
Given our ability to do stints/hips/kidney stuff /heart stuff , these compromised people catch (simple) illnesses easily .
+With number of beds that were taken out years ago and not replaced.
+With no clear leadership over who runs Health.
+ With no long term plan.

The best we can hope for is that things muddle on !
 
Gerry Canning said:
Not wishing to be morbid but.

It seems some of those in A&E are people who years ago would be dead before getting there .
Given our ability to do stints/hips/kidney stuff /heart stuff , these compromised people catch (simple) illnesses easily .
+With number of beds that were taken out years ago and not replaced.
+With no clear leadership over who runs Health.
+ With no long term plan.

The best we can hope for is that things muddle on !
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I had a hernia operation 20 years ago. I was in hospital overnight. I had the same operation 6 years ago. I was in and out in 8 hours.
Heart Surgery used to mean cracking open your chest and weeks in hospital. Most procedures are same day or overnight now. We don't need as many beds as before.
 
Up to his appointment as DG HSEs, Tony O'Brien was the "Trolley Man" tasked with getting patients off trollies and reducing the queues in clogged up A&Es. He failed totally at that job so he was the obvious choice for DG. Is that what Harris is hinting at with the root and branch examination of managerial performance in the HSEs?

The organisations and the overpaid help supposedly managing them are now a huge embarrassment to Inda & Co. Although he was their man whose appointment "behind closed doors" led to a lot of FF bluster about the lack of openness and transparency, a fair old bit of guff from the Soldiers of Destiny, is it curtains for "Trolley Tony"? Next please.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/hse-appoints-insider-tony-obrien-as-new-director-202237.html
 
Firefly said:
If this is true (and it sounds plausable to me) I would think the HSE, in its defense, should publish this information. At least it might give the honourable Liam Doran something to chew on.
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I can supply the bould Liam with mastication material. Why are his nurses absences from work running at 3 to 5 times the rate of medical staff? Why is it that 12.5%, 1 in 8, of his nurses' absences from work are uncertified? Are they using uncertified sick days as a perk or an entitlement? Figures and graph from official HSE documents.

[broken link removed]
 
mathepac said:
I can supply the bould Liam with mastication material. Why are his nurses absences from work running at 3 to 5 times the rate of medical staff? Why is it that 12.5%, 1 in 8, of his nurses' absences from work are uncertified? Are they using uncertified sick days as a perk or an entitlement? Figures and graph from official HSE documents.

[broken link removed]
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I've heard it mentioned before that nurses get sick more often as they are, by nature, in contact with sick people more often. I think it would be interesting to see if there is a difference in sick leave rates between staff nurses and those who work through agencies. Also, it would be interesting to see the sick rates during the first 2 weeks of January when the hospitals are under such pressure.

Sick rates running at 3 to 5 times the rate of medical staff seems totally crazy. If this alone was addressed there would be many more nurses available to treat the paying public. The nurses themselves would be less burdened too as there would be more of them to shoulder the burden.
 
Based on the numbers above, again I stress they are HSE numbers up to Oct 2016, the "HSE Absenteeism League Table 2016" reads as follows by staff group:-

1 Other Patient & Clinical Care, 5.5%
2 General Support, 5.1%
3 Nursing, 4.9%
4 Management & Admin, 4.1%
5 Health & Social Care, 3.5%
6 Medical/Dental, 1.2%

Nurses get sick more often? I don't know but all the heavily unionised non-medical groups seem prone to high levels of absenteeism with shocking level of absences uncertified.

Maybe the answer is to employ more medics, they seem tougher and healthier. Remember this group includes the so-called "junior doctors" working 80 hours per week, twice the hours on average of other group with 1/3 to 1/5 the absenteeism rates. Without this group everything stops.

The numbers reflect increased absences in Jan/Dec and another peak around March (Easter/Paddy's Week-end on the lash anyone? Or is that my inner cynic showing?)
 
mathepac said:
emember this group includes the so-called "junior doctors" working 80 hours per week, twice the hours on average of other group
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Nurses were on a 37.5 hour week but under Croke Park they had to work 39 hours. The overtime for Sundays seems very high according to this link. I presume that's wrong.
 
@Purple I'm not sure what the relevance of the O/T post is or the nurses hours, but remember that when a nurse shows up for an 8 or 12 hour shift, his meal breaks count as work time. Other staff groups must be at work for 9 hours to get paid for 8, in other words they are not paid for break- or meal-times.
 
mathepac said:
@Purple I'm not sure what the relevance of the O/T post is or the nurses hours, but remember that when a nurse shows up for an 8 or 12 hour shift, his meal breaks count as work time. Other staff groups must be at work for 9 hours to get paid for 8, in other words they are not paid for break- or meal-times.
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That can't be right; people don't get paid for their meal breaks.
 
Nurses most certainly do as do clinical staff members, including nurses, in certain residential treatment facilities. How do I know, first hand experience.
 
mathepac said:
Nurses most certainly do as do clinical staff members, including nurses, in certain residential treatment facilities. How do I know, first hand experience.
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So in real terms that's what, an hour a day of extra pay? That would be the same as a 10% pay rise... or if they were like everyone else we could have 10% more nurses for the same cost.
 
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