ALMOST 34,500 patients were left languishing on a chair or a trolley at University Hospital Limerick during 2024, according to new figures released by a lobby group.
The total number of people on trolley’s recorded by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) for 2024 was 23,203.
This figure does not take into account weekends and Bank Holiday’s when numbers are not recorded.
Because of this, lobby group, the Mid West Hospital Campaign believes that the true number is closer to 34,500.
Once again UHL has emerged as the most overcrowded acute hospital in the country last year after the INMO reported record overcrowding of.
Both the INMO and the Mid-West Hospital Campaign has expressed their alarm at the level of overcrowding at University Hospital Limerick during the course of last year.
The nursing union reports the number of patients without a bed in acute hospitals from Monday to Friday, excluding weekends and Bank Holiday Mondays.
The UHL 2024 total was more than 10,000 more than Cork University Hospital, which had 13,162 on trolleys, University Hospital Galway had 10,983 patients, Sligo University Hospital 7,618 patients and St Vincent’s University Hospital 6,922 patients.
On February 7, 2024, UHL recorded the highest daily number of people on trolley, which surged to 150 that day.
A large number of surgery and outpatient appointments were cancelled last August when a decision was taken to desescalate UHL.
Taking INMO figures that are only recorded over five days and applying a seven-day average, the Mid-West Hospital Campaign has estimated there were 34,468 patients on trolleys in UHL during 2024.
Marie McMahon of the Mid-West Hospital Campaign said this huge level of overcrowding was “heartbreaking”, despite the use of 50 beds in a Nenagh nursing home, which meant there are fewer long-stay residential beds for people requiring respite or nursing home care.
Ms McMahon expressed grave concern about overcrowding at UHL, where there were 122 on trolleys on Monday and 102 on Tuesday.
These figures come at a time where a lot of surgery and operations are already being curtailed.
She cited the case of one sick patient who was left waiting for a bed on a chair and trolley from Monday to Friday before he got a bed on Saturday. Calling for short-term solutions to ease overcrowding, he said an acceptance that a new ED is needed to be provided as soon as possible.
She urged all patients, doctors, nurses and media stakeholders to make a written submission to HIQA, which is conducting a review on whether a second ED is needed in the Mid-West region.
INMO General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said there has been an unacceptable number of patients on trolleys in 2024.
“Nurses, midwives and other healthcare professionals should not have to bear the brunt of public anger due to poor planning and lack of capacity in the health service year in, year out.
“The next Government now has an opportunity to drastically improve the chronic overcrowding issues in hospitals right across the country. Staffing hospitals and scaling up capacity properly to be at the top of the list of priorities for the new government.
“There needs to be a turning point in how healthcare staffing is planned and managed, and it needs to start with an immediate lifting of all recruitment embargoes and moratoriums and focusing on capacity, staffing and conditions across acute and community services.
“Due to the high rate of hospital admissions of flu and other respiratory illnesses, our members are currently working in very difficult circumstances. The number of patients being treated on trolleys both in our emergency departments and on wards will have implications for infection control. Placing trolleys on ward corridors where there are no windows or proper air flow systems render the areas unsafe.”
East Clare correspondent, Dan Danaher is a journalism graduate of Rathmines and UL. He has won numerous awards for special investigations on health, justice, environment, and reports on news, agriculture, disability, mental health and community.