Disclaimer: We didn’t waste any emergency personnel’s time – we knew a person receiving treatment in the hospital and decided to go uncover reporting while they were there. This is what we found out:
It’s late at night in a major hospital’s A&E department. No-one’s talking apart from two men who are giving out to each other about Simon Harris. A door opens and a weary doctor steps out with a clipboard in one hand. He calls out the name of a patient, gets no answer and tries again. When there’s still no answer he shrugs his shoulders slightly, turns the page and calls out the name of the next person on his list.
It’s like this every night according to the porter we spoke to. People get sick of waiting. They wait for hours and then they leave, still sick, still in pain but unable to wait any longer as the chairs are too sore. Sometimes they even get onto a stretcher but are there so long that they just give up and discharge themselves.
One 75-yr-old woman told us she came in with a sprained ankle at 5pm. After waiting eight hours on a chair in A&E, she was told there were 4 people ahead of her in the queue. Two hours later, she was told there were 7 ahead of her because more people had come in by ambulance.
“I had to go home in the end,” she told us the next day, her voice breaking. “The nurses were so kind but they’re not allowed to let anyone skip the queue. I have diabetes and I was afraid I was going to collapse so I said I’d take my chances with the ankle.”
Another young man with severe heartburn told us:
“It gets so bad that I can barely breath. I have to sit on the side of my bed and try and wait until it passes, it feels like I’m getting a heart attack. I had to give in and come in today, it just got too bad. I got a taxi here for around 10am and I’m still here waiting. I was just seen by the triage nurse who said the doctors were very busy. That was 5 hours ago. I can’t go home because I’ll only end up coming back in.”
We spoke to a nurse, completely off record and just in passing conversation. She had no idea who we were or what we were doing – but we didn’t dupe her, we just asked her questions that everyone would ask.
She told us that the day we were there was no different to any other day:
“Oh no, this is quite normal. We’re so understaffed but sure what can you do? You see Harris on the telly doing a PR stroll through a hospital and that’s that for another 6 months. We’re on our own but we know that now so we just do our best.”
Complimented on their performance, I asked her does she think it will ever change?
“No, if anything it’s just going to get worse. There’s more people living in the area, moving to the area and our numbers and department size stays the same. The government just don’t care.”
I then got talking to an ambulance driver who was dropping an elderly patient into the department who had fallen and had likely broken their leg or hip.
Again, nonchalantly just commenting on how busy and frantic the A&E was, he said:
“You think this is bad? You should see it when we get 10 calls and have to prioritise who do we go to first!”
Quite a shocking revelation – in other words, the understaffed personnel quite literally have to delegate who gets treated first, possibly even who gets to live.
The one thing the entire department had in common, and this goes for the women who worked on the check-in area too, was that they were all very friendly, helpful and did their best.
The doctors, mostly non-Irish nationals, the nurses, mostly Irish with a few Philopino nationals, the carers, a mixture of both men and women, were all exceptionally empathic and professional.
For their respective job roles, they worked very hard to ensure every patient that actually did get seen was taken care of and looked after well.
The only exception was a dinner lady who didn’t seem as compassionate towards the patients as the rest of the staff – perhaps she was just feeling the pressure of trying to dish out food to so many hungry and tired people.
There were screams, cries and tantrums, but the understaffed department did its best – they just are getting absolutely no help from the Minister for Health Simon Harris, the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar or anyone from Government.
Is this what we want? A health service where OAPs have to “take their chances” with an injury because they’re afraid they’ll collapse in hospitals?
At this stage, the hospital crisis has become a national emergency. The Government might be ignoring our sick, but here at the Liberal we’re not going to stand for it. We’re dedicating this week to an indepth look at the health service. And we’re demanding answers from the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, for YOU, our valued readers.
Today, we’re contacting the Department of Health to ask Minister Harris for his response to the national emergency that exists in the health service and that is creating misery in hospitals all over Ireland. We will bring you the answer tomorrow.
***Tell us your story***
Do you have a story to tell about a night spent waiting on a hospital trolley? Have you spent hours waiting with a loved one who is in pain and suffering because of Simon Harris’ incompetence? Email us today with your story – [email protected]