Election 2024: Hospitals — 'Old, young, everyone is just thrown on a trolley'
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Mary Cahillane’s elderly father-in-law spent 18 hours waiting for a hospital bed while sitting in a wheelchair during one long day at University Hospital Limerick (UHL).
While the tragic deaths of patients including Aoife Johnston, Eve Cleary, and Martin Abbott have caught attention in recent months, ongoing certainty of delays is also a huge worry for local families.
“My father-in-law was in there, I think he was in there for 18 hours. He didn’t even have a trolley, he had a wheelchair,” the Limerick woman said.
"A wheelchair for 18 hours; can you imagine the pain of sitting in one of those for so long and not being able to lie down? There are people who don’t even get a trolley when they go in there."
The man, in his late 70s at the time, was supported by family members throughout but they could not change anything.
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“He had people in there advocating for him, but it was an issue of capacity. There were no beds,” she said.
During visits to the ED, she has seen “old people, young people everybody is just thrown on a trolley".
“But the elderly in particular if they don’t have any family advocating for them, they are literally left out there," she continued.
"The elderly on trolleys really affects me personally, I just can’t bear the thought of it.”
Emergency medicine consultants in Ireland regularly highlight the health risks of overcrowding like this. High-level studies in France and the UK have linked an increased risk of death to even one night on a trolley.
She knows UHL has opened a geriatric emergency medicine service in the ED to help older people, but she said simply, “It is swamped.”
Instead, she suggested a separate ED could be set up in the nearby St John’s Hospital for older people. Creative thinking is needed, she urged.
Ms Cahillane was frustrated by a pledge to review health services locally. This review, by Hiqa, is examining whether a second emergency department is needed.
“It’s not enough to say this is terrible, we know this is terrible. We know,” she said.
She urged election candidates to “come out and say we need more emergency departments in the Midwest.”
She said people know what the problems are, and she called for solutions instead.
“If there is a new emergency department and if it is situated also in Limerick — because that is what the talk is — where does that leave the people of county Clare who have been fighting for so long, and the people of county Tipperary who have been fighting for so long,” she said.
If that happens, she warned the problems caused by distance from Limerick to places in west Clare, for example, will remain.
She is a founding member of the Midwest Hospital Campaign. This group is made up of people affected by or fearful of overcrowding at UHL.
They want three EDs previously shuttered at Ennis, Nenagh, and St John’s hospitals re-opened and have taken the unusual step of running a candidate in the election.
“We want to make this a live issue on the doors for people, we believe it should be the main topic on the doors in the Midwest — the hospital and what politicians are going to do about it,” she said.