Hospital overcrowding: ‘Battleground’ hospitals trying to regain control

With 528 patients on trolleys for up to 20 hours awaiting hospital beds, emergency medicine consultants have repeated to HSE chiefs the overcrowding crisis will not be solved without extra doctors, nurses and beds.

Emergency departments (ED) and hospital wards nationwide are being routinely described as “battlegrounds” and as “horrific”.

Among the worst affected, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation’s Trolley Watch, is Cork University Hospital (CUH), with 40 patients on trolleys yesterday, with 60 at University Hospital Limerick, and 37 at Midland Regional Hospital, Tullamore.