The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has called for urgent action today as trolley figures soared to 603, the highest number of patients on trolleys since 4 February 2020.
Seventy people are on trolleys at Galway’s hospitals – 46 at University Hospital Galway and 24 at Portiuncula Hospital.
INMO General Secretary, Phil Ní Sheaghdha, said that the number of patients without a bed in our hospitals today is simply unacceptable and should not be tolerated.
She described the fact that so many patients are on trolleys while COVID is still a feature in hospitals as “inexcusable”.
“Since the first week of January in particular, the INMO has been calling for urgent action to ensure that trolley numbers do not rise to unsustainable levels, yet here we are barely the second week of February with a dangerous amount of patients on trolleys,” said Phil.
University Hospital Limerick has the highest number of people on trolleys (71), follwed by Cork University Hospital (58), University Hospital Galway(46), Letterkenny University Hospital (44), St.Luke’s Kilkenny (44), Sligo University Hospital (43), St. Vincent’s University Hospital (37) and Portiuncula Hospital (24).
“We are calling for the Emergency Department Taskforce to be convened and for emergency measures to be deployed in the areas worst hit,” said Phil.
She said that we cannot allow the health service to revert to form and allow pre-COVID levels of overcrowding to become the norm once again in our hospitals. Patients and nursing staff deserve better.
“If non-emergency services need to be curtailed in order to allow the HSE and hospital groups to get a handle on out of control trolley figures then that must be done.
“It is not acceptable to our members to allow overcrowding become an out of control problem once again.”
