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Hospitals
Shortfall of doctors in Emergency Departments
A review by the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine shows there is an “unsafe deficit” within a certain grade in the Emergency Medicine tier, even after the recruitment of staff from abroad.
A CENSUS OF staff in Ireland’s Emergency Departments has shown that there are some “unsafe” deficits in staffing levels.
The Irish Association for Emergency Medicine (IAEM) completed the survey after the HSE began its recruitment drive to bring doctors from India and Pakistan to Ireland, so the figures include the new recruits.
It found that:
Whilst recruitment to the more junior Senior House Officer grade (SHO) has been successful with all vacancies filled (36 of these are filled from the HSE India Pakistan Recruitment), there unfortunately still remains an unsafe deficit within the more senior Middle Grade or Registrar in Emergency Medicine tier.
Only 71 per cent (108/152) of these positions are filled (four from the HSE IPR) and almost 1 in 3 of these more senior positions requires expensive temporary agency staff to fill them.
The hospitals whose Emergency Departments still have 50 per cent of their middle grade doctor positions unfilled, and who are using agency staff to plug the gaps are:
- Children’s University Hospital, Temple Street, Dublin
- Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown
- Galway University Hospital
- University Hospital, Limerick (formerly the Midwestern Regional Hospital)
- Mayo General Hospital
- Naas General Hospital
- Letterkenny General Hospital
- Our Lady’s Hospital, Navan
The IAEM says that the continued reliance on locum senior medical staff in Emergency Departments “is not only expensive but is potentially detrimental to standards of clinical governance and risk avoidance in patient care”.
It also said that if the middle grade medical tier remains understaffed, this puts the reforms undertaken by the Special Delivery Unit (SDU) in jeopardy.
The IAEM recommends that the government immediately focus on “potential strategies to ensure that the medical staffing of EDs is secure”.
It says this is dependant in the long-term on significant consultant expansion.
In the short term, the IAEM says the middle grade tier should consist of doctors of senior trainee status to ensure that there are adequate trainees to go on to become consultants in emergency medicine and a regularised staff grade position.
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