Musical chairs in MUH

Musical chairs in MUH

Áine Ryan

Government protocols to address the issue of overcrowding in the country’s emergency departments is more musical chairs than an effective new strategy to ensure a more efficient health service. That is according to Fianna FΡil Councillor Lisa Chambers and, indeed, one Mayo man who yesterday told The Mayo News about his experience of the system last week when his GP sent him to hospital with chest pains.   Last week surgeons were sent home early and surgeries cancelled at Mayo University Hospital (MUH) because of overcrowding in the emergency department, according to General Election candidate, Cllr Chambers.
 Ms Chambers claimed that under new protocols surgical beds are being used to subsume the overflow from emergency departments under new Department of Health protocols.
“MUH is obliged, under an order signed by Minister Varadkar, to put certain procedures in place once overcrowding reaches certain levels. Twenty five percent of in-patient general surgical beds and 60 percent of day surgical beds are being used to cater for emergency overcrowding,” she said. She argued that reducing day surgery beds by 60 percent was ‘disastrous’.
“Not alone does it create a huge backlog, but there is also the real danger of cross contamination when emergency patients share ward places with those recovering from surgery,” Cllr Chambers continued. She noted that the MUH A&E department, which was built to cater for 20,000 people annually, is now receiving in excess of 35,000, a figure which has been exacerbated by the closure of Roscommon A&E .
Last month The Mayo News revealed that Cllr Chambers and Taoiseach Enda Kenny had become embroiled in a row over the issue of overcrowding at MUH’s A&E department. She claimed a reliable hospital source had confirmed that trolleys were moved to the Acute Medical Assessment Unit and the Surgical Day Unit as an attempt to deal with overcrowding, on the day Mr Kenny officiated at the opening of the new Cystic Fibrosis Unit.
The Taoiseach’s office subsequently released a clarification by MUH which stated that when the hospital management ‘anticipate’ ‘high numbers’ on trolleys, they ‘initiate an escalation plan’, one of the steps of which is to transfer patients on trolleys to the Acute Medical Assessment Unit and the Surgical Day Unit.  “This was the case on Friday (January 15) as it has been on a regular basis for the past three weeks, when the demand for beds exceeded the number of available beds in the hospital,” they stated.

In my words
One patient’s A&E story
“I had a bypass (coronary artery bypass) a year-and-a-half ago and in the last while I began getting bad chest pains. I’m in my early 60s and after I got very bad last Tuesday morning I went to my GP. As soon as he saw me he said I needed someone to drive me over to A&E in Castlebar. A&E was very busy but I was seen fairly quickly. Then a very nice nurse called me into the Examination Room and from there I was sent up to the Day Unit where a doctor examined me and I was given a bed there.
“I noticed the nurses were having fierce problems getting medicines; they didn’t seem to be directly available to them. I was there for two days and during that time there was only one day-patient admitted for a procedure.
“I heard a nurse apologising to people on the phone about having to defer their day surgeries. A fellow beside me was discharged and his bed wasn’t cold before someone else was admitted to it. The nurses were so nice but under fierce pressure.”