101-year-old left on trolley for 25 hours

A 25-hour wait by a 101-year-old Co Clare grandmother on a trolley at the emergency department at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) has been described as "inhumane, deplorable, and disgraceful".

Mary Fogarty of the Irish Nurses and Midwives’ Organisation made the comments after the woman’s granddaughter slammed what she described as “a wreck of a health system we have in Ireland”.

In a Facebook post highlighting her grandmother’s trolley plight, the Barefield woman said: “This is not a unique case.”

It is the second such reported incident to occur in the space of two weeks after a 101-year-old woman was forced to wait 26 hours on a trolley at Tallaght hospital emergency department.

The Clare woman last Wednesday was left waiting five hours for an ambulance to transfer her the 34km from Ennis General Hospital to UHL.

The grandmother, from Ballinruan, near Crusheen, then spent 25 hours on a trolley at UHL before getting a bed late on Thursday.

Her granddaughter said the elderly woman “was left fasting for most of a day for a scope that was not going to happen that day at all and was rescheduled”.

Ms Fogarty said: “What happened to this 101-year-old is inhumane and you wouldn’t see it in the third world. It is a catastrophic situation where the oldest person in the hospital is left to languish on a trolley for all of that time. How was this allowed to happen?”

Ms Fogarty said that the situation at the department at Limerick “hasn’t improved one iota. It is worse than it ever was”.

She said INMO members raised the plight of the 101-year-old woman with her last week.

The woman’s granddaughter said her granny was “delighted” to get a hospital bed after what she had been through. She said: “She is doing quite well now thankfully, may get to move back to Ennis hospital soon and hopefully home.”

The family has asked that the woman not be named.

A spokeswoman for the HSE said the hospital’s emergency department had seen an unexpected increase in patients presenting over the last week which had resulted in high numbers of patients waiting on trolleys and long delays. She said patient confidentiality meant she could not comment on an individual patient.

“UL Hospitals Group apologises that any patient has to wait to be admitted, delivery of the best possible care for the patient is our priority from the moment of presentation.”

She said among the factors contributing to the increase in pressure within the emergency department is the older age profile of patients presenting along with the complexity of issues they have.

“UL Hospitals Group has enacted their escalation plan to deal with the increase.”

The spokeswoman said a number of actions had been taken to help reduce numbers and wait times for patients. Those include:

• Transferring patients from UHL to Ennis Hospital, Nenagh Hospital and St John’s Hospital;
• Patients who have finished their care are being transferred to community care;
• Extra rounds to identify patients who have finished their acute care to enable them to be discharged.