Overcrowding in hospitals should be treated as a "national crisis", the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has said.
INMO General Secretary, Phil Ní Sheaghdha, said the same problem arises every year and is "not acceptable".
The INMO will begin to consult nurses and midwives on possible strike action next week in response to the overcrowding crisis because their working conditions are "so bad".
READ MORE: Irish nurses threaten strike action over unsafe working conditions due to hospital overcrowding
This comes after a record number of 931 patients were left waiting on trolleys in hospital corridors on Tuesday.
Ms Ní Sheaghda told RTE’s This Week programme: “We’re not going to hang around, we’ll be meeting members this week, next week and the week after.
"What we can say to patients is we stand with them, we stand with them every day and every night of the week, our members are on duty 24/7.
"We do not accept the conditions under which we’re providing care to them, we want them to stand with us and also raise this as a national crisis."
Ms Ní Sheaghda also said it is “not acceptable” that the health service is overwhelmed this time every year and it results in "unnecessary deaths" for patients.
She said: "It is simply not acceptable that every single year around this time, we have this crisis because the effects of the crisis for patients actually is that they’re dying unnecessarily, if that isn’t a stark enough issue to get all of government action, we don’t know what is."
Ms Ní Sheaghda said that INMO members do not indent to put up with their working conditions as the current crisis was "entirely predictable".
She continued: “We know that there is an inability to act fast enough despite all of the issues being raised in the middle of the summer this year, both with the HSE and the Department by our union, we still have the same problem which was entirely predictable.
“It’s simply not good enough to expect staff to just put up with that and they’re saying very clearly to us, it’s not their intention to put up with it."
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