Patient protests after she spent ‘degrading’ five nights on trolley

A WOMAN who spent five nights on a trolley in Limerick hospital this month said it was frightening and degrading, and is calling for urgent changes to services in the area.

As the number of people on trolleys at the hospital hit an all-time high, Deirdre Nugent told the Irish Mail on Sunday her experience was ‘a real eye opener’.

‘You hear these trolley figures, but when you experience it, it’s so horrible and so degrading,’ she said. ‘It was mental, very busy. There was trolleys everywhere, people everywhere.’

Ms Nugent was playing pool with her son Joe, eight, at their local arcade in Ennis, Co. Clare, when she tripped and fell. Knocked unconscious, she was taken by ambulance to Limerick on Monday, November 11.

Although this happened minutes from Ennis Hospital, University Hospital Limerick (UHL) has the only emergency department in the region for serious injuries. Joe travelled in the ambulance, with a paramedic phoning his grandparents to meet them.

Ms Nugent, 42, an experienced office administrator, was to be in hospital for eight nights, five of them on a trolley.

‘On Monday, Tuesday night and until late on Wednesday I was on a corridor in A&E. And then Wednesday night I was moved up to a ward, but I was still on a corridor up there. I wasn’t in a room. There were two other people on trolleys on the corridor as well,’ she said.

‘One night about 3am I was left alone up there, for about one and a half or two hours. There were other patients there on trolleys but they were taken away. It was frightening,’ she said.

Nurses, patients and visitors walked by, doctors forced to give confidential medical information in public. Ms Nugent and other patients were directed to use public toilets in the A&E and on the corridors.

Trolley numbers that week ranged from 28 to 39, according to the Irish Nurses & Midwives Organisation (INMO), less than half the latest record of 85 this week but enough to cause serious distress.

Ms Nugent got a bed on Saturday, November 16, anxiously awaiting a second MRI scan. She was released four days later.

‘I got talking to a lot of people in there,’ she said.

‘I didn’t meet one person who spent less than three nights on a trolley. The HSE are not doing what they need to be doing. Limerick needs the support of local hospitals,’ she said.

Emergency departments in Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s in Limerick were closed in 2009 as part of an HSE move to centralise care. Expectations that University Hospital Limerick would be funded to meet the increased number of patients have not been met.

This week the INMO announced more people were left on trolleys this year than in 2018, with December yet to come.

Co-organiser of the Mid-West Hospitals Campaign Noeleen Moran said: ‘We are trying to bring this to national attention – 85 people on trolleys in corridors is not conducive to healthcare.’

In a bizarre twist, Ms Nugent was stunned to hear from local radio station Clare FM that UHL sent the station an apology after she did an interview on air about her distress.

She said: ‘I wasn’t even looking for an apology but to come out and say publicly, “We apologise to Deirdre Nugent”, but not to actually apologise to me. It just goes to show they are just all about appearances.’

A hospital spokesman said: ‘UL Hospitals Group regrets that any patient has to face long waits in our emergency department during busy periods, and any distress or inconvenience this causes for patients and their loved ones.’

‘I wasn’t even looking for an apology’