Overcrowding spike sees 30 patients on trolleys at Galway hospital

 The number of patients waiting for admission to the emergency department at University Hospital Galway (UHG) on trolleys or chairs skyrocketed to 30 on Friday.

 According to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), which carries out the daily tally of overcrowding in the country’s hospitals, the numbers left on trolleys was 26, with an additional four patients moved to wards which were already full.

UHG had the worst conditions of any hospital in the country apart from Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. Nurses could pinpoint no specific reason for the spike, which made for a stressful period in the emergency department.

“It was strangely high last Friday, the highest for at least three months. The numbers seem to have increased significantly the end of October, they shot to an average of 20 in the first week of November, it eased off at the beginning of December and then Friday it was 30 out of nowhere. The nurses were really stressed out,” said an official in the Galway union office.

Last June, University Hospital Galway had the distinction of having zero patients on trolleys awaiting admission. However the good times were not to last.

The number of patients on trolleys between March and September this year was 1,725 – down by more than one-fifth on the 2,214 recorded for the same period in 2012. That left UHG in sixth place in the country for patients left on trolleys.

Read more in today’s Connacht Sentinel