By Charlotte Webster-
An elderly woman who had been waiting several hours to be admitted to the Royal Victoria Hospital died while lying on a trolley in its Emergency Department.
The Southeastern Health Trust which has sent its condolences to the woman’s family said on Monday evening that 164 patients are in the emergency department (ED) at the Ulster Hospital near Belfast, with 53 patients still waiting to be admitted.
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The tragic news comes as Antrim Area Hospital Emergency Department was forced to close on Saturday after it had reached full capacity due to the number of patients that were needing to be admitted. The trust described the decision as regrettable, which exacerbated the pressures they were already facing.
In a statement, the trust said: “Belfast Trust would like to send our condolences to this patient’s family, our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.
“We have reviewed this patient’s care and spoken to their family. Out of respect for the patient’s family, we will not make any further comment.”
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On Monday night, The South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust issued an “urgent staff appeal” for nurses to work in critical areas.
It said: “We are appealing for nursing staff (registered nurses and health care assistants) to help across critical areas tonight.
“If staff can assist in any way, please call via the Trust switchboard on 028 9048 4511 and ask for patient flow.
The trust’s medical director Chris Hagan said at times there were 50 to 60 patients waiting for an emergency department bed over the weekend.
“Our thoughts are with the lady’s family and obviously we will look into this further,” he told BBC News NI.
“But sometimes patients do pass away in our emergency department.
“The emergency department on Saturday and Sunday was exceptionally busy with huge numbers of attendances – 50 to 60 patients were waiting for a bed so sometimes patients will be on trolleys.
“Of course in an ideal situation, if a patient is end-of-life we would want them to be in a room on their own with their family around them, but you have to understand the current pressure that the system is under, sometimes the care that we provide would not be exactly what we want.”
The woman was surrounded by other patients on trolleys when nursing staff realised, she had died.
She was subsequently moved to the resuscitation area.
Desperate Measures
Only last week, the Irish Nurses Organisation called on the Government to bring in desperate measures to retain nurses and midwives to help address the crisis, as they warned that staff were stretched to the limit.
Its general secretary,Ms Ni Sheaghdha said midwives are being recruited from Ghana and other African countries to plug the staffing gap.
Nursing Home
The BBC reported that the woman was brought into the hospital by ambulance from a nursing home.
Staff who worked at the weekend said it was among the busiest, with insufficient beds to cope with the very sick and elderly people waiting on trolleys to be admitted.
“We were already under a lot of pressure on our emergency department this weekend with the number of patients who required admission without allocated beds and we’d been helping Northern Trust throughout the weekend,” he added
The medical director said Northern Ireland needed a functioning executive.
“This is a regional issue about how crowded our emergency departments are, about the problem of delayed discharges from hospital and undoubtedly a functioning executive having oversight of that and supporting departmental colleagues is really important, particularly around budgets,” he said.
Dr Hagan said a functioning government was particularly important as the health service was entering “one of the most difficult winters that any of us will have faced”.
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