Lorraine Higgins (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and thank him for taking this matter on the Adjournment on overcrowding in the accident and emergency department at University Hospital Galway and the potential for nurse prescribing to be used as a means of alleviating the ongoing crisis.

The Minister of State may be aware it was reported on 20 January that 44 people were waiting on trolleys at University Hospital Galway, but this figure was accurate only if one counted the trolleys visible in and around the accident and emergency department. I am led to believe a further 38 trolleys were spread among a number of wards, which meant the real figure was 82. I am also informed it took up to three days for some of these sick and elderly patients to get beds. Now is the time to examine viable solutions for these figures, which are quite regrettable.

As the accident and emergency department crisis continues throughout Ireland the practice of nurse prescribing is a resource which is not utilised to its fullest extent. Last year approximately 7,000 patients spent time waiting on trolleys in accident and emergency facilities, as reported by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation. Nurse prescribing is considered a forward-thinking development in the health care sector and would help reduce the overcrowding we face in hospitals throughout the country, in particular in Galway.

The nurse prescriber qualification permits nurses to examine, diagnose and prescribe for residents in nursing homes and residential health care facilities when the patient's general practitioner signs an agreement to this arrangement. Health care professionals find many elderly patients are sent from private nursing homes and residential health care facilities to accident and emergency facilities to receive IV fluids, antibiotics and other such drugs which may need administering because nurses employed at such operations are unable to prescribe them. This further exacerbates the overcrowding crisis at accident and emergency departments throughout the country.

Nurse prescribers are able to provide services to private sector patients but a problem arises with medical card patients. The HSE will not issue a GMS prescription pad to nurses employed at non-HSE facilities, therefore effectively barring this practice. Utilising nurse prescribing would not only be of great benefit to the residents of such facilities who would have timely access to medical treatment and would not have to wait for a house call from already under pressure general practitioners, but there would also be benefits for taxpayers who would not have to pay for accident and emergency department visits where patients can be treated at a private facility. The HSE policy does not encourage competition in the health care industry as a result of what I have stated. To provide an equal level of care to patients residing in private nursing homes and care facilities it is important this practice be abolished and nurse prescribing be embraced. I look forward to hearing the thoughts of the Minister of State on this matter. I apologise for gasping; I had to run upstairs to get here on time.