More than 6,800 people have been without beds in Galway University Hospital this year, according to the latest figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation.
The total figure is 6,870 and this has led Fianna Fáil city councillor and Galway West election candidate Ollie Crowe to declare that the health services in Galway are “in crisis” with “little being done by Government” to alleviate problems across the sector.
Cllr Crowe said he was recently contacted by a constituent who spent more than 72 hours on a trolley in UGH. “The staff in UGH were excellent in assisting this person but it’s disgraceful that this situation has become so common,” he said, pointing out that there were more than 30 other people on trolleys in the hospital at the same time.
“It is absolutely no way for people and their families to be treated,” he said. “Nowhere else in Europe are failures like this tolerated and that’s why we know there are solutions. We need to get to safe staffing levels for nurses, remove the consultant pay inequality to address the chronic shortage of doctors, equip GPs to treat people at home or in their communities, open the diagnostics suites longer, ensure that home care packages are in place, so patients can be safely discharged.”
