The emergency department of University Hospital Galway was found to be “grossly overcrowded”, with patients waiting on trolleys and chairs in corridors, during an inspection by the State healthcare regulator earlier this year.
The Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) found not all hospital staff were wearing appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) and the overcrowding posed a risk of infections being transmitted between patients.
The report from the February 16th inspection, published on Monday, said staff were working in a “very challenging environment” in the hospital.
The hospital emergency department was “grossly overcrowded and very busy”, with patients left waiting for lengthy periods before being triaged and for a bed, it said.
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One patient inspectors spoke to had been in the emergency department for more than 20 hours, spending the night on a trolley in the corridor.
The Hiqa report stated that the closure of a number of local nursing homes was also impacting on the ability to transfer patients out of the hospital.
There were “significant medical staffing shortages” including a low level of emergency medicine consultant cover. The report noted the hospital had hired four new emergency medicine consultants who were due to start in September.
Patients waiting on trolleys “had little to no privacy or dignity”, with the ability of staff to discuss their medical details confidentially “severely compromised,” inspectors said.
The report said due to the overcrowding Hiqa was not confident the hospital had effective measures in place to reduce the spread of viruses, such as Covid-19.
Nearly a fifth of patients were in the emergency department for more than 24 hours, the report said.
An additional temporary emergency department opened last October “was not functioning as effectively as it should be,” it said.
The hospital was not meeting required standards around patient dignity or staffing and only partially compliant with two other standards inspected.
An inspection of Wexford General Hospital raised concerns about overcrowding in its emergency department too.
The February 8th inspection found the emergency department “was busy and overcrowded”, with 11 patients being cared for on a corridor.
The report said the overcrowding and lack of isolation facilities “posed risks to spread of infection and risk to safe practice”.
The healthcare regulator said the hospital’s reliance on agency staff to cover nursing and healthcare assistant vacancies was “not sustainable in the long term”.
The hospital did not meet required standards when it came to respecting patients’ privacy and dignity, and was partially compliant with three other standards.
A January 26th inspection of St Luke’s General Hospital, Kilkenny found it had “limited capacity to respond to unplanned medical staff leave or a surge in activity”, which Hiqa said was a concern.
The hospital emergency department was overcrowded, with waiting patients being accommodated in other units, which Hiqa said was a sign of “system-wide” problems.
“The waiting times for triage, medical review and admission to an inpatient bed were such that these represented a risk to patients on the day of inspection,” the report said.
