440 patients waiting on trolleys in hospitals around the country

There are currently 440 patients waiting for hospital beds around the country. 

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation have released their daily Trolley Watch figures today, Monday, June 24, revealing there are 440 patients waiting on trolleys.

Out of these 440 patients, 351 of them are waiting in Emergency Departments and 89 are waiting on trolleys in other hospital wards.

University Hospital Limerick is the most overcrowded hospital in the country as there are currently 85 patients waiting for beds today. 

Other hospitals around the country that are experiencing high rates of overcrowding include University Hospital Galway with 53 people waiting on trolleys, St Vincent's University Hospital with 48 waiting and Cork University Hospital with 32 patients waiting for a bed. 

This number has increased from Friday, June 21, since there were 368 patients waiting on trolleys for a bed nationwide.

According to the INMO trolley Watch figures for May, 10,577 patients, including 195 children, went without a bed in Irish hospitals.

Last month, the government announced they would be delivering 3,352 additional beds to hospitals around Ireland. 

Following this news, the Nurses and Midwives Organisation’s General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha released a statement, highlighting the importance of hiring more medical staff. 

The General Secretary said, “The INMO welcomes the announcement regarding the delivery of beds but delivery is entirely contingent on correct and safe staffing levels. For every acute medical/surgical bed It requires a minimum of one additional nurse per bed and higher numbers for high dependency and complex needs and seven additional nurses per bed for intensive care unit beds”.

“To realistically achieve this increase we must significantly increase undergraduate nursing and midwifery places and introduce bespoke retention measures to ensure nurses and midwives stay in the system”.

“With today’s announcement it has never been more obvious that the HSEs recruitment embargo must be immediately lifted for nursing and midwifery grades”.

Ní Sheaghdha continued, “There is little point in announcing additional beds without a workforce plan in place. The HSE and Department of Health have yet to publish the funded workforce plan for 2024 and we are now at the end of the fifth month of this year. If this is the methodology that will continue for workforce planning it is hard to have confidence in the HSE’s ability to deliver these additional beds”.