NON CONSULTANT HOSPITAL Doctors (NCHDs) are being offered quadruple pay to cover emergency services at Cork University Hospital (CUH) this weekend.

Sources at the hospital told TheJournal.ie that doctors are covering the emergency department despite not having any emergency department experience.

“This coming Friday and Sunday night there is no Registrar to cover the ED due to persons leaving the roster, general NCHD shortages and a lack of additional cover in the system,” said one hospital worker.

“As a result, the hospital is offering other already overworked NCHDs quadruple pay to take these shifts. Hospital management is also attempting to take NCHDs from non-ED specialities, such as anaesthetics, and place them in ED to cover the roster.”

The HSE, however, says that the hospital will be staffed, but stopped short of saying to what level.

“This coming weekend the Emergency Department at CUH will have a multidisciplinary team on duty to provide care for patients attending the department. This will be supported by the consultant on call for each speciality in the hospital. The hospital wishes to assure the public that there will be sufficient staffing levels in place this coming weekend for those who attend the department.”

Sources at the hospital say that this is not the first time that this has happened and that it is harming already-low morale amongst doctors.

Mark Doyle of the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine says that the CUH situation is more extreme than the norm, but that emergency departments around the country deal with short-staffing on a daily basis.

He added that locum doctors are called on in regular occurrences to cover doctors.

“Sometimes, it’s just a case of having a doctor there.

“The registrar is a lynchpin of an emergency. They carry a lot of responsibility and they are on the floor 24/7.

“We’ve been flagging this issue since 2010.”

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