"The last number of days has been horrendous at the hospital" - Councillor claims

The Chairperson of the Regional Health Forum West has said the numbers attending the ED at Letterkenny University Hospital is unprecedented and commended the staff at the hospital for their work in recent days.

Councillor Gerry McMonagle said: "The last number of days has been horrendous in the hospital. I understand that is trying to be done but it dosen't seem to be working, can I ask the question are there meetings regular or otherwise between all the stakeholders?"

He said he fears hospital staff members could decide to leave their positions because the situation has worsened.

He asked if there are meetings between GPs, NoWDOC, Saolta and management at LUH to find solutions or a pathway decreasing numbers at EDs.

The Executive Chairman of the Regional Health Forum, Tony Canavan, said there has been an increased level of joint-working between hospital and community delivering services and general practice delivering services.

"There's been a renewed focus on that under a couple of services one of them Enhanced Community Care programme," he said. 

He said that older people and people with certain conditions can receive appropriate care outside the hospital. He added that additional services will come on stream. 

“It’s not an ED problem, it’s not even a hospital problem. It’s a whole health service problem and you would see that GPS, community services and hospital services are under very significant pressure currently,” Mr Canavan said.

Last week, 203 attendees were in attendance at the ED in Letterkenny setting a new record. 

“The previous week we had 193 which in itself was a new record so we have had records broken by records in successive weeks in terms of record attendsances at Letterkenny University Hospital. It’s on the back of that we are seeing high numbers of patients waiting on trolleys. It’s not what we want but there is a lot of work going on in the background to try and ensure that patients move as quickly through the system as they possibly can.

“I do think we are making good progress but it’s the kind of work that will take a number of years for us to start seeing real impact in terms of patient care. You have to build things now so that they can deliver over the coming years.”

Cllr McMonagle said he feared the loss of dedicated staff as a result of the high numbers attending. 

“Last night was horrendous  and going by the numbers of what I have heard, it’s probably near another record-breaker. It’s human beings we are talking about, it’s the elderly primarily and it’s young people and it’s the staff who are at the brunt of this every day. My fear is that we are going to lose dedicated staff members and that’s the last thing we need," Cllr McMonagle said. 

Mr Canavan said he fully agreed the incidents do have an impact on staff and added that there is a negative impact on patients particularly the elderly. 

"There is a very significant for both patients and staff," he said.