Teen in Waterford psychiatric unit saw other patients covered in urine and faeces

A 19-year-old Waterford student has told of the appalling conditions at the controversial psychiatric unit at University Hospital Waterford (UHW).

Shauna Aylward told the Déise Today show on local radio station WLR that during the three months she spent in the unit earlier this year she observed patients covered in their own urine and faeces who were not cleaned until visitors alerted staff.

“I had no idea of what I would expect, I had no idea it would be like that. I thought this would be somewhere I could get help, somewhere I would feel safe and could get better. Unfortunately what I witnessed was a disgrace.”

As first reported by the Irish Examiner, photographs emerged last week of patients sleeping on the floor of the psychiatric unit. On another occasion, Ms Aylward said she saw a patient being dragged naked down a corridor to be put in the seclusion room.

Ms Aylward, who suffers from panic attacks and a high level of anxiety, said she regularly had to sleep on a chair with just a sheet as cover while male patients walked up and down the unit. “I was very scared, I couldn’t sleep.”

Ms Aylward also told of how a male patient repeatedly asked her to go into the bathroom with him. She told staff and he subsequently tried to headbutt her in the smoking area of the unit.

I was too scared to go to the dining area to eat. They had a rule that you have to go to the dining area to eat. I didn’t eat for four days. A lovely woman who served the food brought it to me in bed, but a nurse took it away before I could eat.

"I was starving and I began to feel institutionalised.” Conditions at the unit were some times so bad she said that “you could go out of the ward and come back and your bed was occupied by a new patient and you would have to sleep on the floor.

“There were male patients wearing nappies. One man was very confused and soiled, there was no privacy for him. Other patients would make comments.” She also witnessed a lot of aggressions among patients and said that the staff did their best but there were not enough of them. “I could be left for an hour on my own crying, I would beg the staff to speak to me and they’d say they would come back, but they didn’t."

“I didn’t need to be pumped full of meds, I just needed somebody to talk to me.” What has been happening at the unit has been going on for too long, she added.

A spokesman for the HSE said it does not comment on individual cases "but please be assured that the HSE would discuss any aspect of a client’s care directly with them or their family members."

There has been an "unusually high number" of involuntary referrals at the unit, he added.

"Psychiatric departments are obliged to admit such patients in the interests of their own safety, notwithstanding capacity to do so." In some cases patients need to wait overnight for a bed in the unit and are offered chairs and blankets, he added.