Tag Archives: Limerick University Hospital

FEARS have been expressed the new Omicron variant of Covid-19 may lead to staffing shortages in hospitals early in the New Year. Dr Catherine Motherway, a leading intensive care consultant at Limerick University Hospital, has voiced concern in a recent interview that the highly transmissible new variant will have a very significant impact on staff. The National Ambulance Service (NAS) meanwhile has put private operators on standby in expectation that high numbers of staff will be lost to Covid, coupled with an expected surge in call-outs in January. Case numbers soared nationally to 11,182 on Christmas Eve, with Omicron as the driving factor. The variant now accounts for 83pc of all cases. There were 38 confirmed Covid-19 patients in ICU at UHL on Tuesday, which was the third highest in the country after 51 were recorded in Beaumont Hospital and 38 in Tallaght. The HSE’s Performance Management and Improvement Unit has confirmed 12 of these confirmed cases are being treated …

UNIVERSITY Hospital Limerick-based colorectal and general surgeon, Colin Peirce, has been bestowed with one of the most prestigious honours a surgeon in Ireland can receive, when he was chosen to deliver the 43rd annual Millin Lecture for 2020. A significant event in the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland calendar, the Millin Lecture is traditionally delivered during the college’s annual Millin Meeting each November, before an audience of hundreds of surgeons from all across Ireland. This year, in line with public health guidance on social and physical distancing, Mr Peirce had to pre-record the 43rd Millin Lecture, for online transmission during the college’s virtually hosted 2020 Millin Meeting, as part of the 2021 Charter Day Meetings. Distancing has not diminished the honour Mr Peirce feels for the recognition by his peers of his contributions to practice nationally and internationally, and for what the honour means for UL Hospitals’ Group. Best known for his work on pioneering robotic colorectal surgery at …

ON Wednesday (February 20) 57 patients were waiting for beds at University Limerick Hospital. This was according to INMO Trolley Watch figures. Nation-wide, a total of 442 admitted patients were waiting for beds. Of that figure, 322 are waiting in the emergency department, while 120 are in wards elsewhere in the hospital. Every morning at 8am, INMO members count how many patients are waiting in the Emergency Department for a bed and how many are waiting in wards elsewhere in the hospital. The INMO Trolley Watch counts the number of patients who have been admitted to acute hospitals, but who are waiting for a free bed. These patients are often being treated on trolleys in corridors, but they may also be on chairs, in waiting rooms, or simply wherever there’s space. The INMO started Trolley Watch in 2004.

KILKEE was in shock and mourning on Friday following news that a local man, in his mid 50s, had died following a fall while taking down Christmas lights. The accident happened in the early afternoon. The man was airlifted to University Hospital Limerick where he passed away. He has yet to be formally named. However he was very well known in the community, particularly in sporting and business circles. He played football with St Senan’s Kilkee and was also a regular participant in the West Clare Mini Marathon, which was due to take place on Sunday but has been postponed as a mark of respect.

AS nurses in the Mid-West prepare to ballot for industrial action in the new year, an Ennis councillor has hit out at the HSE over plans to move patients from the overcrowded emergency department at the flagship hospital in Limerick, to ‘clinical assessment’ rooms at the downgraded University Hospital Ennis. Also, an Ennis man, whose 87-year-old mother was sent into University Hospital Limerick (UHL) to have a ‘racing-heart’ condition calmed down, has spoken of his horror at the conditions that she endured while she spent more than 57 hours on a trolley and a chair in a hallway and the “living hell” of patients and staff in the corridors of the hospital. “We went to our local GP last Tuesday and they were worried about her heart, which was racing, so they sent her into Limerick to maybe get them to slow it down with a beta blocker and calm it a bit,” he said. “We arrived at the emergency …