In the last 10 days I have had three experiences of the unacceptable conditions at accident and emergency departments in Cork hospitals. Two incidents at Cork University Hospital and one long wait in the South Infirmary served as a strong reminder that A&E is a tough place to work and not a pleasant place to be a patient.
The first incident came to my attention by text on my phone while knocking on a door on the canvassing beat. This is what the text said:
“Simon I’m in CUH at moment. My mother was taken in last night at 11pm she is 78 yrs old and one of 17 people on a trolley in one hallway, she is there 16 hrs now. And half of those 17 are elderly. That is just the hall we r in. All cubicles full. Would like to ask r min for health to spend those hrs in a hospital gown, no privacy, thin blankets, for same length of time.”
It took more than 24 hours for that poor lady to get a bed in the largest hospital in Munster with a new A&E department to boot. The text to inform me that a bed had been found for her sums up the kind of frustration that so many families must be feeling after a visit to A&E:
“Mother got a bed at 11 last night, that’s 24 hrs later. She has osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis and chronic airways disease plus what she was admitted for. Health and Safety have promised to go to CUH today also fire inspector…my brother called them.”
A few days later I visited a family friend, in his late sixties, who had fractured a hip in a nasty fall. He was lucky enough to be given a bed after six hours of lying on a trolley in public view in the A&E hallway.
Then last Friday night, I sat in A&E at the South Infirmary for five hours with a friend who had been canvassing with me but had a minor accident that needed attention.
A young couple came in with a very young child who had a serious gash on her forehead. They, too, had to wait and wait. Eventually they were seen, only to be told to come back again the following morning for the necessary stitches.
The staff were pleasant, professional and courteous at all times. However it was the sheer length of time it took to actually get seen by a doctor, and the lack of urgency to get patients seen, that resulted in my friend walking out of the hospital in frustration before she was seen at all. This was after waiting from 8pm until 1am just to talk to a doctor about the results of an x-ray.
I am told that last week was a particularly bad week in A&E at CUH. However, despite this it is clear that the care sick people are getting when taken to A&E is not even close to good enough.
Crammed trolleys on corridors are perhaps the most blatant example of a sector of the health service that simply isn’t working. I have huge admiration for the people who work on a daily basis in A&E departments; trying to organise and deal with the kind of chaos that currently exists must be very demanding. They deserve better, and certainly the patients do.
So what can be done to solve the overcrowding? Well one of two things needs to happen. We must either create larger A&E departments, with access to more space, more beds, more staff and more doctors, or find a way to keep more people out of hospital altogether to reduce the numbers requiring care.
One way to reduce the pressure on A&E is to establish GP-led primary care centres locally within communities, so that all minor injuries and mild sickness can (as they should) be dealt with outside of a hospital setting. This approach was promised by the Government but hasn’t been delivered.
Only very sick people should be going to hospital for treatment and care, to get the priority they need. Everyone else should be treated outside of a hospital environment by well resourced GPs and medical support staff.
Simon Coveney is a Fine Gael TD and MEP. He is writing a weekly column for Metro Eireann
