Elderly woman waits six hours for stitches on head wound

A 98-YEAR-OLD woman had to wait for over six hours in casualty before receiving stitches for head wounds after she slipped in a nursing home.

The woman, who turns 99 in a fortnight, slipped and fell in her nursing home and split open the back of her head.

She had to wait in line in a corridor at Waterford Regional Hospital before receiving ten stitches to her head.

Catherine’s daughters, Myra and Esther, yesterday said they are disgusted with the way their mother was treated and want a public inquiry into the “fiasco” in the country’s accident and emergency departments.

They asked that their surnames be withheld for privacy reasons.

“We got a call from the nursing home to say they had rung for an ambulance. We arrived before it did - it took three-quarters of an hour to come,” Esther explained.

“The nursing home staff had rung ahead to casualty and we had believed our mother would be seen immediately. Blood was pouring down her neck and she was in agony. But when we arrived, we were told an accident had come in and my mother, who was in a wheelchair, was put out in a corridor.

“They took her blood pressure and pricked her finger for diabetes. We then had to wait two-and-a-half hours for an x-ray and a further two hours after that to be seen by a doctor. My sister and brother had to hold her down, howling with pain, while the doctor stitched her head.

“I don’t know how she didn’t die of the pain and the shock of it all. She felt every single prick of that needle. We were first told she would probably be kept overnight for observation but they then released her at 3.45am.”

Their campaign for a probe into the incident at Waterford Regional Hospital has been backed by local Workers Party councillor John Halligan who says it’s a sad reflection on the way elderly people are treated and the Irish hospital system is managed.

Nobody should have to endure such a wait, particularly someone who is elderly, Mr Halligan said when he exposed the case yesterday on local radio station WLR FM.

“You’d find it hard to get a worse scenario than this one. Nobody would expect to be left waiting for over six hours with a head wound.

“This shows that our health service is in critical freefall. We are just not able to look after our elderly people. It can’t and shouldn’t be tolerated,” he added.

The HSE for the area said it was not able to discuss individual cases. But it said that it has a complaints department which will deal with any submission made by the family or by Mr Halligan on the matter.

Figures published show that Waterford Regional Hospital’s accident and emergency department is among the busiest in the country.

More than 423,000 patients were seen at casualty at WRH last year, more than at Cork University Hospital and just behind Tallaght Hospital in the pecking order. Yet in resource terms and staffing terms, Waterford is way down the pecking order.