River patrol head warns hospital protocol may cost lives

From this week’s Galway City Tribune – Lives will be lost unless something changes in the manner in which patients with suicidal ideation are treated when they present at the Emergency Department in UHG, according to the Chair of Claddagh Watch waterways patrol.

This stark warning comes after the group, which aims to prevent people entering the river in Galway City, rescued a young man who had attempted to enter the water in the city centre over the weekend.

Arthur Carr, founder of Claddagh Watch, said they alerted emergency services that a young man in his late teens had been found by volunteers over a twelve-foot drop into the River Corrib.

After an attempt to enter the river, volunteers prevented his entry and Gardaí took the highly-distressed young man to the ED at the hospital.

“He was going to take his own life in the river,” explained Mr Carr. “The Gardaí arrived and got him into the van. Within one hour, he was back on the bridge again.”

It transpired that the young man had been taken to the hospital but left shortly afterwards and returned to the river bank – Mr Carr believed that such was his distress, he should have been kept in hospital for his own safety.

Mr Carr described the failure of the hospital to prevent this man from returning to the water as “criminal”.

“It’s very demoralising for volunteers, to go through an extremely traumatic time trying to same someone, only for them to be back on the bridge in a matter of minutes,” he said.

Despite great assistance from the Gardaí, it was when this individual presented at UHG that the situation deteriorated, said Mr Carr.

“You cannot properly assess someone in 20 minutes. There seems to be no responsibility and no accountability.”
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