Additional CUH beds meaningless without staff, Cork professor says

NEW beds in Cork University Hospital (CUH) are meaningless without staff, a leading expert in emergency medicine has said.

Conor Deasy, a professor of emergency medicine at CUH and University College Cork, told The Echo that the measures announced by the minister for health will include an acute trauma development with over 200 beds, in addition to new cancer wards and a children’s acute care building.

“CUH has done very well out of this announcement, when you compare it to other hospitals around the country, but it also speaks to the level of deficit allowed to develop over the last 20 years that they are just now addressing,” said Prof Deasy.

Last week, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly announced plans for more than 4,000 new acute hospital beds across the country by 2031, including 340 in CUH, 82 in the Mercy, and 24 each in Mallow and Bantry.

However, the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine (IAEM), of which Prof Deasy is the president, said that “steps need to be taken to define the staffing requirements associated with these beds and ensure that the recruitment of the necessary healthcare professionals matches bed delivery in a co-ordinated way”.

“We can’t allow delays, we don’t want to be sitting with a beautiful ward, but the beds are not possible to use because there’s no staff,” said Prof Deasy.

Staffing is not sufficient at the moment in the hospital, he said.

“When it’s [the hospital] operating at 110% or 115% capacity, all staff are stretched beyond their limits,” he said.

There were 80 people on trolleys in Cork hospitals yesterday morning, 62 of these in CUH, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO).

'Beds only a part of the crisis'

Meanwhile, INMO assistant director of industrial relations Colm Porter told The Echo that any measures that can help to address the “chronic trolley crisis currently in Cork” are welcome.

“But beds are only one part of the crisis, because for every bed, you need more nurses or midwives,” he said.

“What needs to accompany additional beds is some kind of workforce plan.”

He also warned that beds coming on stream without a huge increase in staff could even lead to the loss of existing staff.

“Persistent overcrowding means people are going to leave — because of the sheer pressure on the system, people are voting with their feet and retiring or going abroad sooner,” he added.

He said the department “should have been announcing that the recruitment embargo was lifted at the same time as announcing the new beds”.

“A bed without a nurse beside it is only a bed, it’s not going to fix everything,” he said.

“Additional beds doesn’t always mean less patients in trolleys, that’s not been the experience elsewhere.

“There were loads more beds added in University Hospital Limerick and their trolley crisis is worse than ever.”

UHL has seen an addition of 108 beds since 2020, but there were 115 people on trolleys yesterday, the highest number of patients without a bed in Ireland.