Clare mother treated on chair after waiting five hours recalls spending four days on hospital trolley in summer

A mother with Crohn’s Disease, and suffering from abscesses on her rectum, was being treated on a chair in the Emergency Department of University Hospital Limerick today where a record 92 patients languished on trolleys in the ED and on wards.

Rachel Hillyard initially presented at the Limerick ED on Saturday but decided to go home after she was informed there was a “nine-hour” wait to see a doctor.

She returned to A&E at 10am today and, after being triaged and seen by a doctor within an hour, she was five hours waiting on a chair in the cramped and noisy ED to see a surgical doctor.

Having fallen asleep on the chair she woke up and explained her situation: “I’m sitting on a chair, it’s not very comfortable.

"To be honest with you there’s actually a lot of people sitting on chairs, they seem to have got rid of the trolleys and have put chairs in.”

“Sitting on a chair is not the best for me. I have Crohn’s Disease and with that comes a lot of perianal abscesses - they’re very uncomfortable and very painful, I’ve no cushion.”

She recalled a “horrible” experience in the same ED last July.

“I came in by ambulance and I was pretty ill with the disease.

I spent four days on a trolley in A&E. Even to turn around on the trolley to vomit, you were sure you were going to hit someone with it. It was that packed.

“I had a very bad flare up and I was incontinent at that time, and I was two days in my own faeces. They (staff) were just up the bloody walls, they were doing everything they could, there was just so many (patients).”

“The two toilets that were closest to me were out of order at the time. With Crohn’s Disease, you could be visiting the bathroom 30 to 40 times in a day, and it’s a matter of urgency, there’s no standing and waiting.”

“That was a horrible horrible experience for me. I had to get in my sister who had to take me (to the bathroom) and wash me. So that was not a nice thing. I have open wounds as well, it was horrible.”

Asked how she could be left for two days in her own excrement, she replied: “When you are very very sick like that, you can’t shout loudest to get attention, you can just try your best and communicate with them. It was absolutely crazy, and the toilets out of order, and you couldn't swing a cat in there.”

“My consultant had advised me to write a complaint at that time, which I did not do because I was so sick, it was the furthest thing from my mind.”

After surveying a line of trolleys next to her in the ED today, she offered: “Something drastic needs to be done.”

“There are a lot of doctors coming in but there are a lot of patients coming in as well. It’s frustrating for both the patients and for the staff.

The staff are run off their feet, doing everything they can with the little resources they have, but it’s not doing any good.

“I just don't know what the solution is. Maybe reopen another hospital, at this stage, if it’s possible.”

In 2009, the then Fianna Fáil/Green coalition signed off on reconfiguring 24-hour emergency care out of Tipperary and Clare to UHL.

The Limerick hospital opened a brand new ED costing €24m two years ago, but overcrowding has continued.

“They have tried everything here, they’ve built a new building and it’s not working. In my opinion it needs a new hospital. Since Nenagh and Ennis (A&Es) closed, it has made it far worse.”

Despite the ordeal for many, some patients were very satisfied with their A&E experience at UHL today.

One woman, who did not wish to be named, said that within 15 minutes of presenting at the hospital with her husband who had a nose bleed, he had been triaged, admitted on a trolley, and presented with a sandwich and bowel of soup by staff.

“We’re in awe of it,” the woman said.

UHL said: "We cannot comment on individual cases. Maintaining patient confidentiality is not only an ethical requirement for UL Hospitals Group, it is also a legal requirement as defined in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) along with the Data Protection Acts 1988-2018.

"When a client or family makes personal information public, this does not relieve us of our duty to preserve/uphold patient confidentiality at all times.

"We are happy to engage directly with the patient on this matter. We encourage feedback, positive and negative, from our patients. In this instance we encourage the patient to come forward and engage in the complaints process in confidence by emailing [e-mail]."