Measures to halt child patients on trolleys urged

A major surge in the number of children forced to wait on emergency department trolleys for up to a day could be halted without increasing budget costs, it has been claimed.

Professor Ronan O Sullivan, emergency medicine consultant at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, said the situation could be resolved by altering where certain medics work and opening some closed beds on a short-term basis.

He was speaking after a new Irish Association of Emergency Medicine report found that the number of children waiting on trolleys in Crumlin has increased by 700% in just three years.