Pull it down: Minister on UHG Emergency Dept

HEALTH Minister Leo Varadkar has put it on the Dáil record that the solution to the overcrowding problem at the Emergency Department of University Hospital Galway is ‘a rebuild’.

Minister Veradkar, in reply to a question from Galway West Labour TD Derek Nolan, said that recent steps put in place to ease the overcrowding at UHG were only ‘stop-gap measures’.

“It is a very old Emergency Department and the medium to long-term solution will have to be a rebuild so that it is fit for the purpose we would all intend,” said the Minister.

He said that in relation to the recruitment of general and paediatric nurses, a panel of 21 experienced staff had been created – 11 of them have been approved to start work in the Emergency Dept over the coming weeks.

He also said that UHG had appointed a Patient Advice and Liaison Officer in the Emergency Dept. tasked with addressing the needs of patients and to ‘improve’ their experience as they wait for access to services.

“It is becoming evident from the data that the rising number of patients over the age of 75 years who are attending and requiring admission is rising.

“But as Deputy Nolan points out, any of those measures around patient flow, greater use of community beds and so on, will only be stop-gap measures,” said the Minister.

Deputy Nolan said that it was now completely obvious that he existing Emergency Department did not allow effective patient streaming and was not compliant with infection prevention and control standards.

Read more in this week’s Galway City Tribune