Wexford consultant brands health system ‘utterly inhumane’ after spending three days on hospital trolley in A&E

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Dr Mick Molloy.

A Wexford based consultant in Emergency Medicine has branded our health system "inhumane" having spent three nights between chairs and a trolley during a medical emergency of his own in another Emergency Department (ED).

Although usually on the other side of things in the ED, Dr Mick Molloy found himself in need of medical attention at another hospital which he declined to name. Having been outspoken on the issue of bed capacity in hospitals across the country in the past, Dr Molloy was appalled by the situation over the bank holiday weekend, branding it "completely inhumane".

"We’re in a situation now where it's inhumane for patients. It's inhumane for staff," he said, speaking to Alan Corcoran on South East Radio. "Staff are facing very angry relatives and patients, which we can understand, but there's very little the staff can do about that.

"I’m a person who is inside the system. I know most doctors and nurses around. I’d know how to ask for a bed if there's one available, but (on this occasion) there simply was not one available. There was nothing they could do or nothing I could do and I didn't hold it against them. But the difficult part was being 48 hours without going to sleep and without proper meals because ED structures are not set up to have proper meal arrangements. As well as that, there's no showering and very limited access to toilets. It's an absolutely horrible position to be in."

Dr Molloy compared the ordeals that patients are being put through in Emergency Departments the length and breadth of the country as being akin to torture.

"The World Medical Association and World Health Organisation have recognised for years that sleep deprivation is a form of torture," Dr Molloy said. "That's effectively what we expose people to when they get admitted to Emergency Departments and can't move from there to a bed on a ward."

While Dr Molloy was quick to praise his colleagues who provided him with medical attention, he noted his gripe was with a failing health system.

"None of my comments are a reflection on any of the staff," he said. "The treatment I got was fantastic. The difficulty was in the accommodation."

Outlining his experience, Dr Molloy said:

"Initially, I was on a chair. I was promoted at one point to a trolley on a corridor. I was moved into a room. I was moved from that room to another room when I needed an invasive medical procedure done. I was taken out of that room and put into a cubical with curtains around it. On one side of me was a person who had been arrested by the guards. On the other side was somebody who had a stroke and dementia and was very upset at being out of their normal circumstances. It was very loud, lights are on all night. You just can't sleep in that environment and there's constantly a new flow of people coming in needing treatment."

Having spoken on several occasions in the past in relation to a major shortfall in bed capacity across the entire country, Dr Molloy cut a frustrated figure as he outlined his experience of A&E from the other side.

"I don't know how else to get this message across," he said. "I've been spouting this message for 20 years and nobody listens. I’m now the patient and I’m speaking from having that bitter personal experience and I’m currently living that experience for the last three or four days and it is horrendous, absolutely horrendous. The one thing I’d ask people is not to take it out on staff."

Dr Molloy went on to express his frustrations with the government for its continued inaction in terms of addressing major shortcomings in the health system.

"We haven't had the increase in beds despite all these press releases from the HSE and Department of Health talking about 200 beds here and 400 beds there," he blasted. "I would love to see where those numbers are on those beds and to prove that they did not exist last year.

"There was a report published by the current Tánaiste when he was Minister for Health in 2002 promising 5,000 beds by 2011. That never happened. And the population has a million more than it was then. We needed far more beds than that. We have constant promises that X will be done and Y will be done, but very little action."

Dr Molloy also resents that the burden is constantly and consistently placed on the shoulders of overworked staff in hospitals up and down the country.

"We cannot provide a room for people if the rooms are not physically there," he said. "If I worked 168 hours a week in the hospital, it wouldn't make any difference. If the rooms aren't there at the hospital, people will still back up at the ED. That's not a safe way to do things.

"You don't attend Emergency Departments to be held there for long periods of time. They're not places that are set up to have people for 12, 24 or 48 hours or even longer. Unfortunately, with the limited bed capacity in our country, that's what is happening right now."

Dr Molloy added that while media interest tends to increase around bank holiday weekends, there are patients on trolleys in Emergency Departments across the country every single day. He even casts major doubts as to the accuracy of the trolley figures published.

"I’d question the figures that the media would get from the Department of Health or the HSE because most hospitals are instructed not to count patients when they are in certain parts of the hospital," he said. "That means that the figure you see, the highlight figure, is still way below what the actual figure is, because the hospital is not permitted to record if a person is in the day care unit when they should be admitted to a ward."

Without wishing to go into much detail, Dr Molloy said that he is coming out the other side of his own personal medical ordeal. However, having experienced the ordeal that is endured by thousands of patients across the country on a weekly basis, he felt compelled to speak out and voice his frustrations with the system.

Crying is almost always involuntary, and for that reason, some of us find it scary when it comes upon us. It means being out of control,