Widow of man who died in UHL says she would rather die at home than attend ‘persistently dangerous’ Limerick hospital

The widow of a man who died at the overcrowded University Hospital Limerick, said that she would rather die at home than attend the Limerick hospital, which nurse union managers today described as “persistently dangerous” for patients and staff with a record 130 patients on trolleys on Monday morning.

Marie McMahon, a volunteer with the midwest Hospital Campaign group, said: “To be honest, I wouldn’t go, I’d just say ‘leave me be’, and if I die, I die; I’m genuine about that, I’m not just saying that for the sake of a soundbite, I’m genuinely saying that.”

Ms McMahon has been calling for the reopening of EDs in Ennis and Nenagh and St John’s, Limerick, since the death of her husband, Tommy Wynne, in 2018, after he spent 36 hours on a trolley in a corridor at the hospital suffering with stroke-like symptoms.

“Looking back over the past few weeks, the trolley numbers have gone over 100, and where are our politicians, where are the people we elected to be our voice? Nobody has raised it, that’s not good enough, they need to be standing with the people,” Ms McMahon said.

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“There’ll probably be a flurry of press statements today but they are not worth the paper they are written on, because they are just not worth it, and how many people have died as a result of overcrowding?”

A previous record of 126 patients on trolleys at UHL on April 21st, 2022, prompted an outcry from patients, politicians, and hospital campaign groups for the reopening of 24-hour EDs in Clare and north Tipperary that were closed 14 years ago.

Ms McMahon asked: “Who are these clinical experts that are saying one emergency department is okay for 400,000 people in Limerick, Clare and north Tipperary, why don’t we know how they are and why are they not held accountable.”

INMO Assistant Director for Industrial Relations for the Midwest, Mary Fogarty, said: “Our members are burnt out and demoralised as a direct result of their working conditions. It is impossible for them to provide safe care in a working environment that is persistently dangerous.”

She called on UHL management and the HSE to “outline what targeted interventions they intend to carry out to take the pressure off our members for the sake of patient safety”.

UHL has undergone significant investment in the past six years, including the opening of a €24 million ED in 2017 but patient overcrowding has worsened.

A 96-bed unit is currently being constructed but half of the beds will replace existing bed capacity at UHL’s outdated nightingale wards. A second 96-bed unit has planning permission but construction has yet to start.

A source inside the overcrowded University Hospital Limerick today said: “There is no dignity here, that was lost a long time ago.”

Video from inside the ED shows patients on trolleys crammed up against one another on corridors.

Sinn Féin TD Maurice Quinlivan called for Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly to resign over the crisis.

Responding to the INMO statement, the UL Hospital Group said UHL remained “exceptionally busy, with 225 patients having presented to the Emergency Department this Sunday, significantly higher than our standard weekend attendance levels, and a high number of inpatients”.

It said there were 39 admitted patients on trolleys in corridors in the ED and a further 25 patients in designated single rooms and cubicles in the department.

The group said there was 87 admitted patients in total “waiting outside of designated bed areas across the hospital”, including 24 patients boarded in the Acute Medical Assessment Unit, and 34 patients on trolleys in inpatient wards.

“The level of overcrowding is far in excess of where we want to be, and we apologise to every one of our patients who faces a long wait time for an inpatient bed,” it said.

It was reviewing elective surgeries across the group “while ensuring that the most urgent and time critical cases can be accommodated as scheduled”.