81 patients are waiting without a bed in University Hospital Limerick this morning (Monday).
This is the joint-highest number ever recorded in any hospital – matching the figures in UHL on 3 April 2019 and 11 July 2019.
Over a thousand patients have been forced to wait on trolleys in UHL this month – already the worst September on record for the hospital, with a week still remaining.
UHL was also the most overcrowded hospital in 2018, with 10,000 waiting without beds.
The INMO has called on the HSE to make a high-level intervention to:
• Curtail services to clear the overcrowding
• End the recruitment ban, which has led to 100 unfilled nursing vacancies in UHL
• Immediately offer full-time, permanent contracts to graduating nurses and midwives, many of whom have still not been offered roles at UHL
• Open a review into the ongoing trolley overcrowding at the hospital
Across the country, there are 534 admitted patients waiting for beds this morning. 382 are waiting in the emergency department, while 152 are in wards elsewhere in the hospital. A full breakdown by hospital is attached.
Other particularly badly affected hospitals include:
• Cork University Hospital – 62
• University Hospital Waterford - 36
• South Tipperary General Hospital - 32
INMO Industrial Relations Officer for Limerick, Mary Fogarty, said:
This is a matter of public safety. 81 patients on trolleys is what you’d expect after a natural disaster, not on an ordinary Monday.
It’s time for direct, high-level HSE intervention. Services should be curtailed immediately to clear this overcrowding.
At the root of this is understaffing. There are a hundred unfilled nursing posts at the hospital, and the HSE are not allowing management to recruit graduating nurses and midwives. The recruitment ban has got to go.
Our members are looking to winter with a sense of dread. If this is what’s happening in temperate months, things can only get worse as accidents and illnesses increase in colder weather.