“WE ARE STILL very busy,” Dr Catherine Motherway, head of the intensive care unit at University Hospital Limerick told The Explainer podcast this week.

Dr Motherway was one of four healthcare experts who spoke to our presenter Michelle Hennessy about how hospital staff, GPs, paramedics and other emergency services are handling the latest wave of Covid-19 – fuelled by the highly transmissible, but less virulent, Omicron variant. 

In this episode, Drogheda GP Dr Amy Morgan tells us that GPs handled a lot of PCR referrals due to people ringing them after getting a positive antigen result in the run-up to Christmas, while also administering boosters and “playing catch-up” on their non-Covid workload.

Dublin-based paramedic supervisor and union representative with NASRA Brendan Flynn said that the Red Cross and the army were called in to help them meet demand as Omicron started to have an impact on their services.

Consultant in emergency medicine at Sligo University Hospital Dr Fergal Hickey, who is also president of the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine, said that staff morale has been sapped by the prolonged nature of not just this wave, but the impact of Covid on Ireland’s health service since March 2020.

Listen here to get the full picture:

https://soundcloud.com/the-explainer-podcast/in-depth-a-gp-paramedic-icu-doctor-and-emergency-medicine-expert-on-working-amid-the-omicron-wave/s-JrP9xhRzDAT?si=cd30cb15919640bdbfa31e72b2946e92&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

This episode was put together by presenters Michelle Hennessy and Gráinne Ni Aodha, and producers Nicky Ryan and Aoife Barry.