by Bernie English bernie@limerickpost.ie
A SERIOUSLY ill woman was covered with a sheet stained with another patient’s blood before being left in a line of trolleys so close to each other that it was impossible to use a bedpan in privacy or get out to go to the toilet.
That’s the shocking view of conditions at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) experienced by a Limerick Post reader who accompanied his disabled wife to the hospital’s emergency department last week after she suffered a suspected stroke.
The man said he was “appalled” when his wife was attended to by medical staff who repeatedly failed to observe basic hygiene measures.
“If conditions in the emergency department were found in an abattoir, it would be closed”, he added.
The county Limerick man’s ordeal began when he found his wife unable to speak and having lost the use of her hand. He called an ambulance and she was brought to the busy emergency department at the hospital in Dooradoyle.
“When I arrived, I was shocked to see that she had been covered with a sheet which had spatters of another patient’s blood on it. Everything went downhill from there in the hygiene department.
“An unidentified man came into the cubicle where she was being treated and read my wife’s documents. He didn’t identify himself. He was dressed in jeans and a lumberjack shirt and while he was there, he scratched his head and his crotch before leaving.
“A medical assistant with a cold used the palm of her hand to wipe the drip from her nose not once but three times. Then she used the computer without washing her hands, Medical staff who came in after her used the same computer before attending to patients.
“A used bedpan was placed on a fold-out table on my wife’s trolley while they were moving her from one bay to another area. When they did move her, there was less than six inches between the trolleys – there were six trolleys. There were no curtains for patients who needed to use bedpans and for those who could get out of bed to go to the bathroom, it was impossible unless they climbed over the patient beside them”.
The man said he was “stunned” by the lack of attention to important detail.
“Every member of staff seemed to think their mouth was a suitable place to hold a pen and in the first four hours we were there, only two members of staff used hand sanitisers”.
In another incident observed by the Limerick Post reader, a nurse dropped a phone and equipment in a sanitised package on the floor.
“She picked both up and then picked out a kit to be used for a chest drain without washing her hands”.
There were also problems with getting essential equipment because of demarcation.
“A woman wearing a badge which said she was a medical assistant told a nurse that she hadn’t ordered oxygen for a patient because there was no porter available to go and get it. Eventually a member of the clerical staff dragged an oxygen cylinder into the department”.
Although the initial medical assessment of his wife was “speedy and thorough , he said It was the subsequent lack of simple hygiene measures that was frightening.
“How staff cope in these battlefield conditions is amazing. Morale is certainly affected and staff from the highest to the lowest grades seemed to be just going through the motions,” he said.
