Health

Aoife Johnston death: ‘Only a matter of time before there is another tragedy’ at UHL, warns local GP

Dr Yvonne Williams of Shannon Medical Centre said that trust in the emergency department at University Hospital Limerick had been eroded

Aoife Johnston, late of Shannon, Co Clare, died at UHL on December 19th, 2022, from purulent meningitis. Photograph: Brendan Gleeson

Emmet Malone
Fri Apr 26 2024 - 12:55

A major intervention is required to restore public confidence in emergency health services in the Limerick area in the wake of the death of Aoife Johnston and other tragedies, a local GP has said.

An inquest into the 16-year-old’s death found that there had been systemic failures, missed opportunities and communication breakdowns at University Hospital Limerick (UHL).

Dr Yvonne Williams of Shannon Medical Centre said hat trust in the emergency department at UHL had been eroded over a period of 10 to 15 years and that “it is only a matter of time before there is another tragedy”.

Referring patients in need of hospital treatment, she suggested, often now became a process of negation with many, particularly the elderly refusing to go while many of those with private health insurance preferred to travel to Dublin, Cork or Galway than attend UHL.

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“We’ve had a few tragedies in the in the last couple of years so people in the community are very distrustful,” she told RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme. “Faith has been lost in the emergency department. Ten or 15 years ago you felt if you went into hospital you would be looked after and if they sent you home, you knew that you were okay to go home”.

[ Systemic failures at University Hospital Limerick led to death of Aoife Johnston, says coroner ]

“That relationship, that trust between patients and doctor is gone and they (the patients) are often quite angry when they do come out. They’re angry they were sent in and they’re angry that they weren’t sorted out and it has a knock on effect on that relationship between a patient and a doctor, that trust, in the long term sometimes.”

She said doctors and other in the area had warned capacity at the hospital wouldn’t be sufficient when other facilities, including those in Ennis and Nenagh, were closed and that the problem now was that these could not be reopened when there was insufficient staff even for the emergency department at UHL at present.

“A major intervention from the government,” is required, she said.

“For how many years have we heard that Limerick A&E is the worst A&E in the country in terms of numbers and people on trolleys and those conditions. The staff turnover is huge and mistakes are happening every week.

“The staff there have no beds to admit people and that has a knock-on effect for the whole hospital. Something special has to be done for Limerick for the people of the midwest. It isn’t fair or safe to allow this to continue. It’s only a matter of time before there will be another tragedy.”

Speaking on Friday morning, Tánaiste Micheál Martin accepted there was a need for a review of the entire emergency response service in the Mid West area in the wake of the inquest.

“It is unquestionably a failure of care within the hospital and in my view, serious action has to take place,” he said.

“I think there have been issues in my view around governance structures in the hospital. There’s a need for fundamental reform at the hospital in respect of how things are organised.

“There is a need to respond properly to an unacceptable and devastating loss of life, all for the want of prescribing antibiotics for sepsis situations.

“I would also say then that there should be a review of the entire region. The clinical advice has always been to concentrate services into a tertiary hospital in a given region. Given the level of failure within the University Hospital Limerick I think it is fair,” he said.

Speaking on the Morning Ireland, meanwhile, Damien Tansey, solicitor for Johnston family said the fact witness at Aoife Johnston’s inquest had characterised the UHL emergency department even now as “a death trap” was “intolerable”.

“It is certainly not acceptable,” he said. “It’s extraordinary.”

He said the inquest had provided the “painstaking and forensic inquiry,” the family had been seeking into their Aoife’s death but that some of the detail outlined of the failings in the care provided to her “beggars belief”.

He confirmed that a number of civil actions have been filed by the family but that they had wanted the inquest to have been completed before they were dealt with.

“We have been invited to mediate those actions,” he said. “The concern of the family was that there should be this public inquiry, the inquest, before that should happen. And I expect that moves will now be made to move the mediation forward.”

Emmet Malone

Emmet Malone

Emmet Malone is Work Correspondent at The Irish Times

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