Picture the scene. You live in Roscommon and your child is rushed to hospital in Dublin. You sleep on a chair beside his bed for the first night. Then it emerges that he will be hospitalised for several weeks. You try to find a guesthouse close to the hospital but you don't know the city. When you should be with your son, you are sitting in traffic, trying to read street signs.
Accommodation for relatives of patients is now a feature of most modern hospitals worldwide, but it has been slower to catch on in Ireland.
This will all change for relatives of patients in the Mater and Temple Street hospitals in Dublin when they are both merged into a new facility in six years time. The £195 million project includes a 30-bed hostel where three Eccles Street houses now stand. A committee is now working to raise the £2 million to provide the hostel.
Regina Prenderville, spokeswoman for the Mater hospital, says the hostel will be in keeping with the Georgian streetscape. As well as bedrooms, the hostel will contain bathroom, a sittingroom and cooking facilities. Relatives will pay a nominal fee to stay there.
Such facilities should be provided in all major hospitals, according to the Irish Patients' Association. The group has called on all hospitals to examine their premises and see if they have any unused rooms which could be converted into accommodation for relatives.
This could make life easier for hospital staff, according to Stephen McMahon, chairman of the Irish Patients' Association. "It's an added pair of eyes and ears for staff," he says. "Hospitals are stressful places. If people have family and loved ones with them, then it helps to alleviate that stress."
He also points out that relatives are more familiar with a patient's moods and notice if the patient is depressed or not eating. "Studies on nutrition have shown that many elderly patients are not eating in hospital and this adds to the length of their stay," says McMahon. "If you have relatives that are free to stay with the patient then they can make sure that the patient is eating. Overall, it means an improvement in the quality of care for patients and should speed up recovery."
On occasion, hospitals pay for B&B accommodation for relatives but a hostel would be a better use of these resources, he says.
It could also free more beds in cases where people are admitted the evening before their treatment starts. "They don't really need to be in the hospital on that first night so they could stay in the hostel with family instead."
But he emphasises that such facilities should be open to all people. "A nominal charge of £6 or £8 might not be much to some people but it might be exorbitant for others. That should be taken account of."
In a far-sighted move, Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, started its parent accommodation service 10 years ago. It now provides accommodation for up to 70 parents and relatives, as well as kitchens, bathrooms, sitting-rooms and facilities for washing clothes. Like the Mater hospital, fund-raising provided the service and a nominal charge makes it self-financing.
"It is full every night from Monday to Friday and a little less so at the weekends as some children go home on Friday," says Claire Rice, patient services officer.
A local house is now being renovated to provide accommodation for two families and that should be ready this summer.
