Nurses at Wexford hospital didn’t see themselves as 'damsels in distress' during fire

Just over 15 months on from the fire at Wexford General Hospital, it remains under investigation with no definitive cause identified yet.

Nurses working in Wexford hospital when it went ablaze last year were "very much in control" and didn't see themselves as "damsels in distress" when emergency services arrived, Eleanor Carpenter, director of nursing has said. 

Just over 15 months on from that fire, it remains under investigation with no definitive cause identified yet, she told the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation annual conference.

“We were in fear all the time, it was an unknown quantity, it was an established fire and there’s medical gases in the hospital so of course there was danger in the situation,” she said.

The response is now being analysed, with much praise given to hospital staff for the swift and safe evacuation of all patients, the first time an Irish hospital was evacuated en-masse.

“It was calmly approached, moving any faster or moving any differently would have probably been less efficient,” she recalled, saying no staff were affected either.

She stressed “there was no chaos”, saying it worked so well because of their training and the close relationship the hospital already had with Wexford council and emergency services.

“It’s not really within our training that we are the emergency, in the way that we think in an acute hospital,” she said.

“What was very interesting is that when the emergency services took control and arrived, we were actually quite shocked. We didn’t see ourselves as damsels in distress, we were very much in control — we got things under control.” 

Eleanor Carpenter, director of nursing at Wexford General Hospital, said the situation 'was calmly approached'. Photo: INMO

She said it took “a tense five minutes” while decision-making issues were ironed out, adding: “we collaborated together.”  Patients were transferred to other hospitals in the region, particularly to University Hospital Waterford.

“We were closed for a total of 19–20 weeks,” she said with just two wards open during that time.

One key challenge was “full IT failure” with nurses falling back on paper ward-books for data.

“The ward-book is always your bible, but with IT advancements people would say ‘oh what are you doing with the ward-book?’ but it did the job on the day,” she said. 

White-boards proved “invaluable” also for recording and sharing patient information, she said.