Trolley order welcome

ANYONE unfortunate enough to have experienced the overcrowded conditions in Irish hospitals will know just how distressing it is when patients are placed on trolleys in jammed corridors near busy emergency departments.

In a development that deserves to be applauded, Tallaght Hospital in Dublin has now been ordered not to place patients who are due to be admitted, on trolleys near the emergency department — one of the busiest in the country.

Hopefully, that will set alarm bells ringing in other hospitals, too numerous to list, where this totally unacceptable practice occurs with frightening regularity.

As a number of recent inquests have shown, when patients are left on trolleys in busy corridors they can die unattended despite being surrounded by teams of highly trained staff and arrays of costly medical equipment — the very things that people rely upon to save their lives.