Number of patients on hospital trolleys up 60%

[alonso]

Number of patients on hospital trolleys up 60% | BreakingNews.ie

Thank God for our courageous and brilliant Health Minister eh? And thank God we had such wealth for so long so brilliantly invested in the system. How has this been let happen?

[H.R. Haldeman]

What I find so baffling is that we are talking about so few people in absolute terms - the article claims there are 300 people on trollies.

That is not a lot of people. Why in the name of blessed Jehovah would the government take all the political heat of stories every year about patients on tolleys when the number equates to 6 people in each of the states 50 public hospitals??? Is it beyond the wit of man to find/build/add 6 bloody beds in each hospital?? Do that and bingo, no one on a trolley.

Bizarre.

[patslatt]

What I find so baffling is that we are talking about so few people in absolute terms - the article claims there are 300 people on trollies.

That is not a lot of people. Why in the name of blessed Jehovah would the government take all the political heat of stories every year about patients on tolleys when the number equates to 6 people in each of the states 50 public hospitals??? Is it beyond the wit of man to find/build/add 6 bloody beds in each hospital?? Do that and bingo, no one on a trolley.

Bizarre.

Provision of stepdown beds to facilitate discharging patients is one of the solutions. But stepdown beds are often occupied by elderly people whose grown up children want to dump them,whether permanently or, in the case of holidays,temporarily. Maybe there should be charges for the beds to prevent this.

[Florence H.H.]

Yes H.R, if the breakdown were that simple I'd agree with you. But bear in mind while the trollies are occupied, patients are building up in the waiting rooms. We're supposed to be able to provide care on a roll on roll off basis. Each person that gets taken into A&E sets off a process of registration, assessment, implementation of care, which usually involves x-rays, bloods, ECG's etc. And then monitoring.In other words, full use of our services and time. To provide this on a continual 'high use' basis, with 1 nurse:8 patients is almost impossible. The requirement of some free time to catch up on paper work and carry on monitoring would be that there'd be some 'free trolly' time.

Also these numbers are not representative of 50 hospitals, not all provide 24 hour A&E services.The larger hospitals such as Vincents and Tallaght can have one person spending 2 or 3 days in A&E, agony for them, with very basic care services for them, certainly nothing like the 'luxury' of a ward with tv etc.And also frustrating for medical staff.

[H.R. Haldeman]

Good points FHH.