Overcrowding crisis at University Hospital Limerick 'likely to lead to mistakes' warns consultant

THE Health Service Executive is people seeking medical care to consider all options before attending the emergency department at University Hospital Limerick due to the 'unprecedented' levels of attendances in recent weeks.

A 'major internal incident' was declared at UHL on Monday and a number of measures have been put in place to alleviate the overcrowding at the hospital.

In a statement, the UL Hospital group said the high numbers of people attending the ED has been driven by a surge in respiratory infections, including Covid-19, flu and RSV.

BREAKING: 'Major internal incident' declared at Limerick hospital as a result of record high attendances

Additional staff have been deployed and the vast majority of elective procedures have been deferred.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, this Tuesday HSE Chief Operations Officer Damien McCallion said the advice to people to seek alternatives to attending emergency departments is set to continue for the next number of weeks and that while care in EDs currently is "far from ideal", clear protocols are in place to prioritise care for those who need it most.

"Those who believe they may be seriously ill and require emergency care should of course come to hospital, but we would urge others to consider seeking support from pharmacists, GPs, GP Out of Hours Services and Minor Injury Units," Mr McCallion said.

Separately, a consultant at UHL has expressed 'serious concerns' about the current overcrowding at the hospital.

Professor Declan Lyons told Morning Ireland, the main issue is the extent to which patients are "actually crammed together side by side" rather than the numbers on trolleys.

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He commented: "When you come to the side of the patient's trolley to examine them you barely have room to get between one trolley and the next and you are competing for that space with care attendants who are trying to feed the patients; nurses who are tying to take observations; porters who are trying to manoeuvre patients so it's physically, apart from anything else, an extremely difficult environment to work in."

Describing UHL as a "national basket case" Prof Lyons added that the overcrowding crisis is impacting outcomes for some patients.

"If you have 100 patients in the emergency department, you can be absolutely guaranteed that five of those will be critically unwell and the first challenge in the emergency department is to identify the five that are sick as opposed to those that aren't that sick. 

"I think in an environment where there is significant overcrowding that process can become very tricky and it likely, I think, to lead to mistakes so I don't think there is any question that the type of environment that we have been dealing with in recent times does lend itself to mistakes, it does lend itself to adverse clinical outcome for some patients and it is a serious serious concern."