The ‘forces’ in UHL at odds over trolleys on wards

University Hospital Limerick. Photo: Don Moloney

Maeve Sheehan

Aoife Johnston’s inquest heard how the practice of placing trolleys on wards to free up space in casualty had recently been discouraged at UHL.

A&E consultant Dr Jim Gray said a new emergency department (ED) was built in 2017 to accommodate increased demand, but the hospital did not get more beds for the extra patients.

For every 100 ED patients, 30 are admitted, he said. When there are no extra beds to take those admitted patients, they stay on trolleys in casualty.

It used to be the case that those patients were placed on wards, which was not ideal but spread the risk, he said. The practice “seemed to stop” in 2022 and there has “been a struggle to reinstate it”.

Another witness said the practice was “recently discouraged”, apparently after a HSE inspection in 2022 that deemed it unsafe.

This led solicitor Damien Tansey to question the conflicting “forces” at play in UHL — one supporting the practice of trolleys on wards, and a “counter force” that did not.