Shameful way to treat our ill senior citizens
IT is hardly an exaggeration to suggest the health service is hit by some sort of controversy or scandal on practically a weekly basis. Year after year, we hear unrelentingly depressing statistics about poor hygiene standards, endless waiting lists for surgical operations, and A&E patients being stuck on trolleys for hours on end before receiving proper attention. Nor is there any sign of the situation improving.
Even by the dismal standards we have come to expect, however, the case highlighted in today’s Irish Daily Mail is particularly disturbing. There is something very wrong when a 92-year-old man can, apparently, be left languishing on a hospital trolley for a period of 24 hours.
Management at Letterkenny University Hospital have apologised to the man’s family for the fact that LUH was ‘unable to provide an appropriate care environment earlier’. The HSE is investigating the circumstances surrounding the case.
Even if this was an isolated incident, it would still of course be completely unacceptable. But recently released figures from the country’s emergency wards show almost 10,500 patients aged 75 or older were kept waiting for longer than 24 hours during 2017. Against that grim backdrop, it is little wonder Ireland rated so poorly against other EU nations in the latest Euro Health Consumer Index.
Given the billions of euro funnelled into the service over the years, its sorry state is a damning indictment of successive governments and ministers. The unfortunate truth is that we’ve all heard so many horror stories at this stage that we are in danger of becoming immune to being shocked. It is bad enough that anyone – adult or child – could be left waiting on a hospital trolley for any length of time. But it is unthinkable that a man in his tenth decade should have to endure such a nightmare.
There have to be some basic principles underpinning the way our hospitals are run. And one of the most fundamental ought to be that if a 92-year-old needs a bed, they should get it without any delay.