87-year-old man was left languishing on trolley for 100 hours
Hospital apologises as record 132 patients go without a bed
‘Accepted as a fait accompli’ ‘Elderly people are very nervous’
OFFICIALS at University Hospital Limerick have apologised to the public for ‘unacceptable and excessive waiting times’ for patients attending the facility.
On Monday, a record 132 patients languished on trolleys in UHL’s emergency department and on wards which are persistently the most overcrowded in the country.
Yesterday, 109 patients were on trolleys in Limerick, still the highest figure nationally.
The apology follows complaints from a Labour councillor in Limerick who described the health service as being ‘on its knees’ after his 87-year-old grandfather waited for 100 hours on a trolley in UHL.
Cllr Conor Sheehan said he brought his grandfather Jeremiah ‘Jerry’ Mullins to UHL last Thursday afternoon with a severe infection in his leg, and that he remained on a trolley from Thursday until Monday night.
‘Frail’ and ‘confused’, he was moved between the chaotic corridors in the hospital’s overcrowded emergency department, according to his grandson. Cllr Sheehan said: ‘I am so angry I could burst. Every year the same story, yet nothing ever changes. This is a complete failure by Government.
‘I just think that a man at nearly 90 years of age deserves to be treated with more dignity and more respect rather than being out there in a place that is chronically understaffed, as far as I can see.
‘The Taoiseach [Leo Varadakar] and the Tánaiste [Micheál Martin] have both been the Minister for Health during the past 20 years, and they both know what the situation is, and this just seems to have been accepted as a fait accompli – that overcrowding is bad in Limerick.’
Sandra Broderick, chief executive of the HSE Mid West health region, said yesterday in a statement: ‘I want to apologise to the public who are experiencing unacceptable and excessive waiting times to access our various services in the community and the hospital [UHL]. Unfortunately, we have had to reduce our elective activity and open additional surge capacity across our hospitals to manage this increased demand.
‘I want to assure the public that the health and social care teams across the region are working at full capacity to meet this extreme demand and I thank the staff sincerely for their efforts.’
Ms Broderick said UHL was, for the second day running, experiencing ‘high demand for emergency care’. She advised people attending the Limerick ED that they would face ‘significant’ delays in being seen by staff unless they were cases of life-threatening or severe illness or injury.
She advised people across Limerick
city and county, Clare and north Tipperary – which are in UHL’s 400,000 population catchment area – ‘to utilise alternative care options such as our local pharmacies, who can give advice on minor ailments; your GP; and our injury units in Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s [Limerick]’.
The UL Hospitals Group said it was trying to cope with an exceptionally high number of unwell medical patients ‘associated with a surge in respiratory illnesses’. It said 261 patients attended the Limerick ED on Monday, which was ‘significantly above average’ and followed ‘an unusually busy weekend’.
The group warned that ‘UHL is currently at its highest state of escalation’ and that elective activity at the hospital was being ‘reviewed on a daily basis’.
Only ‘urgent and time-critical patients’, including cancer cases, were being scheduled for surgery this week, it stated.
However, it also warned of ‘an increase in demand’ at regional injury units and medical assessment units in the hospitals at Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s ‘as more patients choose alternatives to the ED’.
The UL Hospitals Group also apologised to Cllr Sheehan in a post on X (formerly Twitter), saying: ‘We apologise that this is your experience. Can you please DM us with more information so we can help further. Thank you.’
Cllr Sheehan complained that ‘there were supposed to be more timely pathways for elderly patients out of ED’.
He also said his grandfather has ‘literally been travelling around the A&E on this trolley’ for the past five days.
‘There are a lot of elderly people who are very nervous about being brought to UHL; they don’t want to be brought to their local hospital if they get sick – and that is really scary,’ he said.
Cllr Sheehan said his grandfather was ‘finally’ transferred out of UHL to the Croom Orthopaedic Hospital on Monday night.
‘It is a horrible indictment of society that this is the way we treat our elderly when they are sick and that we have come to accept this as “normal” in the Mid West,’ he added.