An elderly woman died of a brain haemorrhage on a trolley in a nurses' tea station at the Mater hospital in Dublin after waiting for four hours to be seen by a doctor because her condition was not considered a priority, a consultant at the hospital told an inquest yesterday.
Eamonn Brazil, consultant in emergency medicine at the Mater, said that Nancy Lucas (74), of Woodhazel Close, Ballymun, was placed in "category three" of the medical queue when she presented at the hospital after having a stroke, since she was quite alert at that point.
Mrs Lucas should have been seen within an hour by a doctor but because the hospital was so under-resourced, she was not seen until her family brought it to the staff's attention that her condition was rapidly deteriorating, he told Dublin City Coroner's Court.
"It is inexcusable what happened to your mother. Things like this are happening on a daily basis. . . It's disgraceful that she wasn't seen for four hours," he told family members in court.
Mr Brazil said he doubted if her life could have been saved if she had been seen earlier by a doctor "but certainly we could have made your mother more comfortable," he told them.
"There is no normal functioning emergency department in the country at the moment. We're not sitting around drinking tea; we're trying to get through the sickest patients first. Unfortunately, your mother became the sickest patient."
Staff at the Mater are forced to treat patients in chairs and on the floor because of the trolley and bed shortage, he said.
The situation was "beyond crisis" and on a daily basis there were 20 to 30 people on trolleys for up to three days.
"Four of my staff sometimes share one trolley. Standards have dramatically decreased and I've written umpteen letters to the Department of Health and the HSE. . . It's getting worse every year," he added.
Jason Lucas, a son of Mrs Lucas, said in court that he repeatedly asked for urgent medical attention for his mother as he watched her condition deteriorate.
"They kept saying 'she'll be seen in a minute,' 'she'll be seen in a minute' and we were fobbed-off. This is a person's life we're talking about. We badgered people but we were just ignored."
Mrs Lucas was finally seen by medical staff after four hours and a CT scan revealed a brain haemorrhage as a result of warfarin therapy, the court heard.
Coroner Dr Brian Farrell recorded a verdict of "death by misadventure" as her brain haemorrhage was as a result of a reaction to her long-term warfarin therapy.
Outside the court, her daughter, Frances Holmes, said: "My mother had no dignity when she died. We were all cramped into a nurses' tea station with no privacy when she died."