One of the country's busiest hospitals is limiting admissions to its Emergency Department, due to severe overcrowding.

Patients are being asked to avoid going to Beaumont Hospital's emergency department and, where possible, ambulances are being diverted to other hospitals.

The hospital is asking patients to contact their GP instead and it is asking general practitioners not to send patients to the emergency department unless it's essential.

Lorraine Monaghan of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation says the level of overcrowding called for drastic measures as the situation deteriorated over the past two weeks.

“It is necessary that ambulances are diverted because the problem is so drastic at present,” she said. “It is an ongoing problem but certainly it has spiraled out of control in the last two weeks.”

In a statement the hospital said “several factors have contributed to the difficult conditions in the emergency department”, including a reduction in the number of step down beds for recovering patients, changes to services across the region (e.g. cancer services) and “increased complexity in attendances at the emergency department”. The hospital says these changes have resulted in an increase in demand on the emergency department and “led to an enormous strain on staff and resources in recent weeks.”

Several factors have contributed to the difficult conditions in the ED, including changes to services across the region (e.g. cancer services) and recent service developments in the hospital, which have drawn on our limited bed capacity.

On Thursday the Irish Nurse and Midwives(INMO) called for the emergency department to go off call immediately. With 92 patients in the Emergency Department and a further 38 waiting on trolleys and chairs, the INMO called for the department to go off call altogether.

INMO industrial relations officer Lorraine Monaghan said:

“This situation is unsafe yet nothing is being done to address it. Patients are at serious risk and staff are at breaking point”.

The INMO said they had contacted HIQA seeking an urgent inspection of the Emergency Department at Beaumont, but were told the resources were not available to carry out the inspection. 

“This is an appalling situation where the national health watchdog cannot carry out its basic function,” Monaghan said.