The Mater hospital in Dublin has apologised unreservedly to a woman terminally ill with bowel cancer who tried to have something done about the appalling condition of toilets she witnessed on a ward there.
In a statement, a hospital spokesman said it "deeply regrets any incidence of sub-standard hygiene" she may have experienced there.
He was responding to a query from The Irish Times arising from discussion with "Rosie" (a pseudonym), who was a patient at the Mater hospital from May 1st last year for six days.
Rosie is 40 and says she has been told by doctors that she has as little as two years to live. She does not want her identity revealed as, while her husband and 18-year-old daughter are aware her illness is terminal, her 13-year-old son is not.
On RTÉ Radio One's Liveline programme, yesterday and on Tuesday, she has explained how she could have survived the cancer if she had had private health insurance and so could have had a colonoscopy earlier.
In an e-mail to the programme last Monday, she said: "My time in the Mater was dreadful. I was terrified I'd pick up MRSA because it was filthy."
She was "put in a ward with cardiac patients, mostly men" and recalled that "once when I used the toilet my pyjama bottoms soaked up urine up to my ankles.
"Even though I was still sick and weak, I still tried to hover over the toilet so I wouldn't have to touch it. I wasn't able to hover and hold up my pyjama legs at the same time.
"I had just given my sister- in-law two sets of pyjamas to take home and wash and had nothing to change into.
"I rinsed them out in the grimy sink and wore them damp until she returned the next day with clean ones. There was excrement stuck to the sides of the toilet for days at a time. Water flooded the shower room, soaked my clean pyjamas and towel that were on the floor outside the shower, and ran out into the hall.
"After that happened the first time, I learned to take a chair in to the shower room to put my stuff on."
Yesterday, Rosie told The Irish Times that she drew the attention of three nurses to the condition of the toilet and was told by a student nurse the situation was due to a stand-off between nurses and cleaning staff over who had responsibility for the toilets.
Nothing was done to dry up the toilet for eight hours after she drew attention to it on one occasion.
Eventually she went looking for a mop to clean it up herself, but couldn't find one.
A Mater hospital spokesman said yesterday "such conditions would be totally at odds with the hospital's required standards and performance levels which are both monitored and audited, on a regular basis, both internally and externally."
As to why the woman was placed in a cardiac ward with male patients, he said: "Unfortunately, due to capacity constraints, the hospital cannot always place patients in urgent need of admission in specialist beds for the duration of their treatment period."
