*Brenda Bleach, Registered Advanced Nurse Practitioner in the Injury Unit in Ennis Hospital.
SUPPLY CHAIN delays have impacted on the opening of a new local injury unit at Ennis Hospital.
Responsibility for the running of the injuries unit in Ennis Hospital was officially handed over to the HSE at the beginning of December.
Group Chief Executive of UL Hospitals Group, Colette Cowan confirmed that delays have been experienced in its planned opening. “It is a new facility, the old facility was old and small, we haven’t opened it yet, we have ordered the equipment but the supply chain is an international issue”.
Once the equipment arrives, it will take a week to commission it so that it is suitable for use, Ms Cowan told The Clare Echo, “the incident in the Suez Canal didn’t help,” she remarked and flagged that similar issues have been experienced across the country. The unit is expected to open in the first quarter of this year with existing workers said to be sufficient to staff its operation.
Moving the outpatient department of Ennis Hospital to an off-site location “has been a very big success,” she outlined at a UL Hospitals Group briefing this week. The former outpatient department will need to be refurbished before it is brought back into use, “it is a nice building but it needs investment”.
Clare TD, Violet-Anne Wynne (SF) was confident the new unit would benefit the people of Clare. “The extremely slow and ineffective recruitment process can often stall these developments, so it is a welcome announcement indeed that the existing staff are in place and ready to go. A modernised and fully-resourced injuries unit will be a great asset to the region. Too many Clare folk have to travel to Limerick and spend excessive amounts of time waiting in a congested Emergency Department down there”.
She added, “I welcome this news as the lack of community primary healthcare supports is an issue I have been raising since elected”.
