Healthy blocking beds
HEALTHY people are blocking seriously ill patients from getting hospital beds because of antibiotic equipment shortages.
And as a result, hospitals have no other option but to care for ill patients on trolleys while their limited number of beds are occupied, for up to a month at a time, by people who need intravenous antibiotics but are otherwise healthy.
The misuse of hospital beds – in the already under-resourced health service – is exposed today after a patient made an official complaint to the Health Service Executive.
Instead of being discharged to go home the pensioner was forced to stay at the University Hosiptal Limerick for a month.
And according to the former patient there were five other similar cases at the Limerick hospital.
The former patient told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘Thanks to the brilliance of the medics at the hospital in Limerick I was ready for home after six days but four weeks later I was still there. I needed two different antibiotics and I should have been able to get these at home.
‘But there is a shortage of pumps to administer the antibiotics and the staff in the hospital had to insert a PIC line so that I could get the two antibiotics three times a day.
‘I was a healthy person in a hospital bed in one of the finest hospitals in the country getting the finest of food and the finest of treatment you could ask for.
‘But I could hear people outside in the corridor screaming in pain. They were ill and were in noisy corridors and I should have been at home. It was appalling and an unbelievable waste of a hospital bed and nursing staff.’
The most recent figures compiled by the Irish Nursing Midwives Organisation show that last Thursday University Hospital Limerick was the most over-crowded in the country with 1,962 people waiting on trolleys for a bed.
At the centre of the antibiotic shortage is medication supplied by the Baxter pharmaceutical firm. A spokeswoman confirmed there had been antibiotic equipment shortages for months due to production issues.
Meanwhile, the HSE told the MOS that Baxter is its sole provider of these specialist types of antibiotics. But they said that any new contracts with its suppliers will include a clause to prevent the HSE being hit with shortages even if there are production problems.