8-hour hospital ordeal that told me our health system is broken

I WAS sitting at home watching the World Athletic Championships on the TV, minding my own business, when my phone rang.

It was 7.30pm on a Thursday and my wife asked me if I could come to the tennis club to collect her. She had had a fall and couldn’t drive the car.

I struck off on foot and got there about ten minutes later, to find her sitting in a chair at the side of the court surrounded by club members. She was in obvious distress.

Another club member, who is a GP, was called and she came from her home to render assistance, a caring gesture for which we are very grateful.

She suspected the clavicle was broken and gave Gaye a shot of Diphene to help with the pain. She also suggested an ambulance might be the way to go, but my wife was reluctant to make a fuss and wanted to travel by car instead. In hindsight, that was our first mistake.

Two lads carried her on a chair up to my car and when she was seated comfortably, we headed off for the city. Where we were going exactly, I didn’t know.

The Mater Hospital was my preferred choice, but that wasn’t an option after 6pm. Neither was the Affidea or the Orthopaedic Hospital in Gurranabraher but somebody suggested the VHI Swift Clinic in Mahon so that’s where we headed.

It was getting on for about 8.30pm when we arrived at the Swift Clinic. The receptionist there advised me that as we weren’t VHI customers we would have to go elsewhere and suggested the Mercy University Hospital instead.

We took her advice and that was our second mistake.

We arrived at the Mercy at about 8.45pm, and as I hadn’t been there for a long time, I pulled up outside what was the old A&E Department and realised that things had changed. The lay-out was a bit confusing, but I eventually found a porter who brought my wife to the A&E Department in a wheelchair.

She was seen by a triage nurse who also suspected the collar bone was broken, but an x-ray would be needed to confirm the diagnosis, so we were asked to take a seat in the waiting area in the Accident and Emergency Department.

My wife by then had a blanket over her and she was visibly in distress and shivering with the cold, but that’s where we remained until about 4.15am. Almost nine hours since she had fallen, and over seven hours since we had arrived in the hospital.

I asked for a nurse at one point who gave my wife two paracetamol. That was all the medication she had during the course of those seven hours, and at no stage during that time did anyone check on her, even though she was in obvious distress.

A doctor came into the room looking for a patient and I suggested to her that my wife was in considerable pain and had been waiting for hours. She asked me for my wife’s name and before I had finished giving it to her, she had turned and walked away.

The waiting area wasn’t crowded but things were moving slowly. There was a guy next to us whose clothes were bloodied, and he had some cuts to his face. Blood dripped onto the floor, so he got some tissue from the bathroom and cleaned it up himself. He was still there when we were leaving but he had managed to fall asleep on the chair.

Others were going in and out for a smoke and didn’t appear to be in too much discomfort.

Another man threw in the towel at about 2am. I heard him saying he had to be somewhere early in the morning and couldn’t wait any longer.

There was a woman with a child in her arms who said she had driven up from East Cork because her child was having difficulty breathing. After several hours, when she couldn’t take anymore, she also left and suggested the child would be better off in his own bed.

Around 3am, another guy wandered in with what appeared to be a cut to his hand. He sat down next to one of the other patients and they were chatting about how long she had been waiting. When she told him she had been there for hours, he went to reception and asked how long it would be before he would be seen. Obviously not satisfied with the answer he got, he waved goodbye and off he went into the night.

At around 4.15am, we were eventually called to another area, where a doctor introduced herself to us and checked on Gaye’s injury, after which she too suspected the clavicle was broken and we were sent for an x-ray.

Ten minutes later, we were back with the doctor and Gaye was fitted with a sling. At that stage she was given a painkiller, a prescription and a referral letter for the fracture clinic in the C.U.H.

It was just before 5am when we were free to leave the Mercy. The actual time it took for the assessment, the x-ray and fitting a sling was probably 25 minutes.

In hindsight, it would have been a wiser decision to call an ambulance and get straight into the treatment area, but my wife is the kind of person who doesn’t want to create a fuss and waste the time of the ambulance personnel.

As it happened, she was the only person showing any consideration because there was a complete lack of empathy displayed throughout our entire experience.

Maybe that’s because this healthcare system has beaten the staff too, which is understandable.

It’s not until you experience it yourself that you realise how broken the HSE actually is.