Dying man tormented by smoker in hospital - family

A family expressed outrage tonight after a 67-year-old man was tormented during his last dying days by a person smoking in an overcrowded hospital ward.

Annie Talbot said that her brother John Glynn, who passed away in Dublin’s Mater Hospital yesterday evening, had spent several days on a trolley in the accident and emergency ward awaiting a bed.

However, she claimed that on top of waiting for over two days in the packed ward for a bed for treatment he was taunted by another patient smoking.

“The person was taunting him with the oxygen, putting the cigarette thing out to the oxygen,” she said.

“He wasn’t too happy about it, would you be if you were lying on a couch.”

Ms Talbot said Mr Glynn, who had smoked in his earlier years and was being treated for emphysema in his lungs, was annoyed by the incident.

“He said he would have been afraid,” she added.

The family said they also felt that stubbing a cigarette out on an oxygen machine was dangerous.

Ms Talbot said that she had no idea how the man, who was standing in the A&E ward at the time, was able to smoke in face of the rigorous anti-smoking legislation.

A spokesman for the Mater Hospital said that it was investigating the alleged smoking incident.

However, the hospital said that it was bound by patient confidentiality and could not discuss individual cases.

“Smoking is strictly prohibited throughout the hospital and it is an issue which is not taken lightly,” the spokesman said. “Regrettably both staff and management have been managing a difficult situation at the hospital’s A&E department in recent months.”

The hospital said it has been working on a number of ways to ease the problem including submitting a proposal to the Health Service Executive for a 25-bed emergency transit ward to be developed as part of the A&E department.

Janette Byrne of Patients Together, which has been working to highlight the overcrowding crisis, said unfortunately the distressing stories were becoming all too familiar.

“We are hearing more and more of people literally dying within a day of getting a bed, and people spending their last few days in fear for their safety and totally disillusioned with the system and feeling totally isolated and afraid,” she said.

The group called on the Health Minister Mary Harney to ensure that patients had a panic button within reach to alert nurses to their plight.

“They are unable to be heard with the noise and the chaos in A&E. The nursing staff cannot hear them,” she told RTE Radio.

Ms Byrne said there had been no improvement in the A&E conditions since they had addressed the issue with the health minister last November.

“We get disgusted and disheartened when we hear the lies that it has improved, that there are not as many people on trolleys. You know they are playing political games, they are playing them with our lives and it has to stop,” she said. “People are suffering in the meantime and dying on trolleys.”