Tag Archives: Local Injury Unit

  Short-term staffing deficits have been cited for the temporary closure of the Ennis Injury Unit on Saturday, August 20th. The UL Hospitals’ Group has announced that the Local Injury Unit in Ennis Hospital will be closed for one day due to a lack of staff to operate facilities. In a statement issued to the Clare Champion, the group confirmed this service will resume as normal on Sunday, August 21st from 8am to 8pm.   The group has apologised to patients who are inconvenienced by this disruption in service. “This decision has been made to ensure patient safety, which we strive to protect at all times. No other services at Ennis Hospital are affected.   “The group are advising people who require treatment for minor injuries on Saturday to attend the Injury Units at St John’s Hospital in Limerick, or Nenagh Hospital,” said a group spokesperson.   The group is also urging people with minor injuries not to attend the Emergency …

The doors of the new €2m purpose built injury unit at Ennis Hospital have opened this Friday morning. The facility, adjacent to the main entrance of Ennis Hospital, replaces the existing unit that has operated out of the main hospital building since 2013. The new unit boasts five separate patient assessment bays, and according to the HSE will have the highest standards in Infection Prevention and Control (IP&C) compliance. There is also a brightly decorated waiting room and a separate triage area. Other utilities include a clinical room, storeroom, senior nurse manager’s office space, and a nurses’ station. Laid out in approximately 300 square metres (almost 3,230 square feet) of floor space, the Injury Unit cost just under €2m—funded from the HSE capital budget—and the project was managed by HSE Capital & Estates. Joe Cassidy, Acting Director of Nursing at Ennis Hospital, said the new unit would bring immediate improvements for staff and significantly enhance the overall patient experience at …

A REDUCTION in sports related activities due to Covid-19 restrictions has been cited as one of the main contributor factors to a dramatic 17.3% decrease in attendances at the Local Injury Unit (LIU) in Ennis Hospital last year. The LIU, which treats minor injuries for Clare people seven days a week from 8am to 8pm, processed 9,537 attendances during 2020. This was a 17.3% decrease on the previous year due to the impact of Covid-19 social restrictions. One of the new developments last year was the attendance of some patients from outside the hospital’s catchment area in places bordering Clare such as Gort in South Galway. In addition to free plentiful parking, high standards and efficiency of the service, Registered Advanced Nurse Practitioner, Brenda Bleach says there is a lot to recommend the unit if you have a minor injury that requires rapid treatment. Despite the drop last year, Brenda and her colleagues remain busy due to the variety and …

Injury Units in Nenagh and Ennis Hospitals and St John’s Limerick will play a vital role in UL Hospitals Group’s ring-fencing of the Emergency Department (ED) at University Hospital Limerick (UL) for treatment of Covid-19 cases and other seriously ill patients during the ongoing public health emergency. As de-escalation of the region’s main acute hospital continues in anticipation of the Covid-19 surge, all patients with minor injuries—such as suspected broken bones, cuts, bruises, sprains and strains—will be redirected to the Injury Units in Nenagh, Ennis and St John’s for treatment. To support this redirection of minor injury work, the injury unit at St John’s is moving from five-day to seven-day opening. From Saturday March 28th, the facility opened from 8am to 7pm on weekends and the unit’s weekday opening hours were also extended, with the facility open until 7pm every day. Dr Gareth Quin, Consultant in Emergency Medicine at UHL and St John’s Hospital Injury Unit, encouraged patients with minor …

UL Hospitals Group is urging members of the public to consider all care options before attending the Emergency Department (ED) at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) today, Monday. The hospital is managing high volumes of patients that have arisen due to a busy 48-72 hours in the Emergency Department. “We apologise to those patients who are experiencing lengthy waits for beds, and we would like to reassure them, and their families, that we are working to alleviate the situation. We have reduced our elective surgical activity as we prioritise emergency admissions at this time. We are appropriately transferring patients to other hospitals in our Group and are working with HSE MidWest Community Healthcare to access appropriate beds within the community,” UHIL said in a statement today. “All patients are receiving expert medical care and every effort is being made to make their stay as comfortable as possible. Meanwhile, we urge people to consider all available care options and not attend the ED …

A €350,000 investment in a new physiotherapy department at Ennis Hospital is delivering for Clare patients in a variety of ways, according to hospital management. The department opened its doors in March 2015, following the redevelopment of a vacated area of the main hospital building. Patient response to the new department, now approaching its first full year of operation, has been very positive, says Niamh O’Shea, physiotherapy manager, Ennis Hospital. “We had been delivering a service in temporary accommodation, which was separate from the main hospital and which had a lot of limitations around space, access, comfort and privacy for our patients. While our patient satisfaction surveys for the services themselves were always high, we did receive negative feedback from patients about the environment. So the new modern department has replaced a building that was really not fit-for-purpose and represents a significant improvement in that respect,” said Ms O’Shea. As the old physiotherapy department was in temporary accommodation, not connected …