A survey of patients waiting 12 hours or longer in a hospital emergency department has concluded that not enough is being done to address hospital overcrowding.
Most of the 85 patients who participated in the "Why Are We Waiting" study at Beaumont Hospital said the solution to hospital overcrowding is to increase the capacity of the acute hospital system.
The research, published in the current issue of the Irish Medical Journal, focused on people aged 17 to 89 for whom a decision to admit to the hospital has been made. Participants were waiting between 12 and 35 hours for a bed. A quarter of patients said that during their stay their privacy or dignity had been violated. This was especially true of women.
Asked what was the worst aspect of the prolonged wait in the emergency department, one third said it was waiting for test results. Two thirds of those surveyed said that less than six hours was an acceptable timeframe to wait for a bed to become available.
According to Dr Peadar Gilligan and his co-authors, emergency overcrowding is a feature of a health service that is working beyond its available capacity. "The solution to the crisis in healthcare in Ireland is more acute capacity and optimum use of that capacity. Part of optimising the use of acute hospitals is to ensure that their emergency departments are allowed to provide acute care in a safe setting, with admitted patients being just that, admitted to a bed on a ward."