Left waiting 50 hours in ‘chaotic’ A&E
Elderly man with chronic disease still hoping for bed in hospital ward
AN ELDERLY man left waiting more than 50 hours in a crowded and ‘chaotic’ A&E was still hoping to get a bed on a ward yesterday.
The overcrowding crisis continued as nurses warned last night that the HSE will have to deliver on their demands to convince them to avert next Thursday’s planned two-hour work stoppages across eight different hospitals.
Pensioner James Coyle, 72, was pictured in the media yesterday sitting on a chair in Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital waiting for a bed, 24 hours after he was admitted at 10am on Tuesday.
He presented with breathing difficulties and remained on a chair in the triage unit for 24 hours .
Dubliner Mr Coyle, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), was eventually given a trolley on Wednesday evening and was still there waiting for admission to a hospital ward yesterday when the Irish Daily Mail spoke to him.
Speaking from his trolley bed, the father of eight said: ‘I cant complain about the [hospital] staff, they are wonderful, I wouldn’t say a bad word against them.
‘I slept for the first time last night; even at home I don’t sleep, I’m awake every two hours. I think I will get a bed today.’
He also said in his time he ‘was a wrestler, I played badminton and I have eight children... I can’t complain, I had a good innings’.
Meanwhile, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation last night sought immediate re-engagement with the HSE to agree on how to deliver measures agreed at the Workplace Relations Commission to address overcrowding and under-staffing.
INMO general secretary Liam Doran called for hospitals to be fined if they fail to implement their crisis protocols, known as escalation policies, appropriately.
Asked what the HSE could do to restore nurses’ confidence, he said they should find additional staff and stop moving emergency department (ED) personnel up to hospital wards.
The overcrowding problem in the country’s busiest EDs has already reached crisis levels ahead of the proposed strike next week.
Yesterday, Health Minister Leo Varadkar said he would do everything to ensure the strike action is averted as it ‘would make a bad situation worse’.
This week at Beaumont Hospital, management requested patients not to attend unless absolutely necessary. In the ED triage area, trolleys were formed into rows with no curtains between them after all the cubicles filled up.
Beaumont Hospital said it dealt with its highest number of patients in 18 months yesterday, and has appealed to GPs not to send patients to the hospital unless it is absolutely necessary.
In the post-Christmas period, the ED experienced an increase in the number of patients attending, culminating in a surge on Monday with 200 people presenting to the department.
This was the highest number of attendances per day over the past 18 months and almost double the average daily attendance rate.
There were 39 patients who were on trolleys or were additional patients in wards in Beaumont yesterday, down from 54 the previous day, according to ‘trolley watch’ figures compiled by the INMO.
One hospital worker said the overcrowding situation is getting worse and that every day staff have to endure ‘chaotic conditions’.
Speaking at the Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition, Minister Varadkar said sustained investment in primary care and social care ‘to keep people out of hospitals in the first place’ is required over a five-year period.
Mr Varadkar said: ‘The strike would make a bad situation worse. Having said that, I understand the frustration of the emergency department nurses.
‘I visited seven emergency departments this week so far. I’ve spoken to them and there is certainly a lack of trust that things will ever change and I understand where that comes from.’
Mr Varadkar said that the level of overcrowding was down 15% on the same period since last year, but that is still ‘nowhere near where we need to be’.
He added: ‘Every hospital is different and the problems that give rise to overcrowding in one hospital can be very different in the next; that’s why you need tailor-made solutions in different hospitals.
‘What’s evident to me is to get on top of this problem, we need sustained investment in primary care and social care in hospitals over five years, so it’s going to take quite some time and a lot of investment.’
Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil’s health spokesman, Billy Kelleher, yesterday said that it was ‘absolutely deplorable’ that 100 additional hospital beds promised by the Health Minister were still not available.
Mr Varadkar said that unfortunately, the 100 additional beds were not open due to adjustments in staff in certain hospitals.
Mr Kelleher said: ‘We’re told it’s because of insufficient staff. Well, the minister should not be promising the beds if he doesn’t have the staff.’ He added that it was ‘yet another example of the minister spinning before delivering’.
Mr Kelleher continued: ‘Last April, he [Mr Varadkar] announced new emergency department measures with great fanfare, but three months later there was no implementation plan in place for them.
‘The reality is that the situation in our emergency departments is effectively as bad as it was this time last year.
‘Shortly before Christmas, the minister was telling us how much things had improved in emergency departments, yet here we are again with the annual January crisis in our hospitals. And so far this year the figures are worse than in 2014 and 2013.’
And an emergency consultant at Beaumont Hospital yesterday said patients are being put at risk due to the difficult environment.
Speaking to RTÉ, Dr Peadar Gilligan, said: ‘We feel that our ability to provide care is compromised by virtue of the fact that we can’t assess the patient in an appropriate space, therefore the sort of questions we can ask of the patient are somewhat compromised.’
‘Strike would make situation worse’ ‘Minister spinning before delivering’