Hospitals are ‘regularly overcrowding their inpatient wards' and a new initiative aims to highlight how bad this problem is.

Ward Watch is being launched by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and this will work in tandem with the organisation's long standing Trolley Watch initiative, which shows how many patients are waiting on trolleys in emergency departments (EDs) at the beginning of each day.

According to the INMO, Ward Watch will also be published on a daily basis, and along with Trolley Watch, it will provide a ‘new combined overall measure of hospital overcrowding'.

"The Ward Watch findings will confirm that a number of hospitals are regularly overcrowding their inpatient wards. This practice compromises the care of all patients on those wards due to an increased risk of cross infection and inadequate staffing, while also minimising the dignity and privacy to these patients," the INMO insisted.

It pointed out that the figures will also show that some progress has been made in reducing the number of patients on trolleys in some hospitals.

"However in others, the level of overcrowding continues, leading to an overall national increase in the number of patients placed on trolleys/beds in inappropriate care environments," the organisation explained.

It said that nurses and midwives are ‘fundamentally opposed' to putting additional beds or trolleys, above the stated complement, on any inpatient ward or unit.

The organisation added that this new initiative was brought forward at the request of its members ‘who experience patients being placed in inappropriate locations on an ongoing basis'.