Madam, - I was distressed to hear the Taoiseach describe the fact of 52 admitted patients having very prolonged stays in the emergency department of Beaumont Hospital as "Beaumont having a bad day". The overcrowding in our emergency department means that we run, on average, at 105 per cent occupancy.
The emergency medical and nursing staff, as well as caring for sick and injured patients who have already been seen and admitted, but for whom there is no available hospital bed, must also see, assess and treat the 130 or so new patients attending each day. As a result, many patients have their assessment and treatment significantly delayed because there is no space in which to see them. Doctors and nurses frequently have to assess patients with serious medical and surgical conditions on plastic chairs and in areas where the consultation can be easily overheard.
For the Taoiseach to trivialise the serious suffering of patients or the effects of dangerous overcrowding in emergency departments is very distressing. In common with many other emergency departments in Ireland, Beaumont Hospital has not just had "a bad day", but a bad decade.
The solution to this ongoing social injustice is capacity. Capacity to understand and be honest about the problem. Capacity in the acute hospital system to provide care when patients need it most, which clearly means having beds available for them. Capacity in the community to provide care for those with ongoing needs but who do not require acute hospital care.
Emergency departments have an extremely important function and compromising the ability of the staff and units to perform it by allowing them to be dangerously overcrowded is potentially life-threatening and absolutely unacceptable. - Yours, etc,
Dr PEADAR GILLIGAN, Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin 9.