Warning of 'dangerous' winter ahead as CUH recorded as second-most overcrowded hospital

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has recorded the worst August for overcrowding, warning of a “difficult and dangerous” winter.

It comes as Cork University Hospital (CUH) was recorded as the second-most overcrowded hospital in the country after University Hospital Limerick (UHL), with 984 patients on trolleys at the hospital during the month of August.

University Hospital Limerick recorded a total of 1,885 patients on trolleys during the month of August.

Nationally, over 9,720 patients were admitted to hospital without a bed in the last month.

The number of children on trolleys is also escalating at what the INMO has described as a worrying rate, with over 167 children admitted to hospital without a bed in August.

INMO General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said there is no doubt this winter is going to continue the pattern of “difficult and dangerous times in our hospitals”.

“The summer period used to see an easing off in overcrowding figures but this year numbers admitted to inappropriate spaces, trolleys and chairs have been alarmingly high too early in the season. The new so-called target of no more than 320 people on trolleys set by HSE was only achieved on five days this year,” she said.

“Last year was the previous record for August overcrowding, and the winter that followed was honestly beyond what we could have imagined. This August is somehow worse again, and our members are worried, for themselves, and for their patients, about what is in store for them over the coming months.

The ongoing increase shows how urgently we need to implement safe staffing legislation, so that hospitals have sufficient staff to diagnose, treat, and discharge patients safely, and vulnerable people are not languishing on trolleys and chairs for days at a time.

She said that medical evidence shows that spending more than six hours on a trolley is detrimental to a patient’s long-term health outcomes and that the INMO believes the situation “is not being met with the required urgency or focus required”.

“The constant state of overcrowding in our hospitals is a leading cause of nurses and midwives intending to leave their current work areas and indeed the professions altogether,” she said.

Meanwhile, on Friday morning, there were a total of 186 patients waiting on trolleys across Cork hospitals.

According to the INMO’s latest TrolleyWatch figures, there were a total of 58 patients waiting on trolleys at CUH, 46 of whom were waiting on trolleys in the hospital’s emergency department (ED) and 12 of whom were on trolleys in wards elsewhere in the hospital.

At the Mercy University Hospital (MUH), there were 35 patients on trolleys in the ED and in West Cork, there was one patient on a trolley in a ward at Bantry General Hospital (BGH).