Ulster A&E ‘free-for-all’

Ulster A&E ‘free-for-all’

28 July 2021

A DOWNPATRICK mum has called for the return of emergency services to the Downe Hospital.

The appeal by Mrs Laura Higgins comes after she spent five hours at the Ulster Hospital’s A&E last week with her 13 year-old son Odhrán, who badly injured his ankle while playing Gaelic football for the Downpatrick RGU club.

The schoolboy sustained the injury within a stone’s throw of the local hospital where the urgent care centre was closed.

When his mum contacted the out-of-hours GP service, she was advised to take her son to the Ulster Hospital, given the extent of his injury.

While what followed was a challenging experience, Mrs Higgins has nothing but praise for the staff at the Ulster’s emergency department where she estimates there were just over 100 people in the waiting area at one stage.

She was also concerned that at no time was she asked if she or her son had Covid symptoms in a waiting area where people— some of whom were not wearing masks and coughing — were “packed in like sardines”, with blood on the treatment room floor and waste bins overflowing.

Mrs Higgins said there was only one female and male toilet available and cannot understand why the South Eastern Trust, which regularly warns people that the Ulster’s A&E service is under extreme pressure and to consider other options if their condition is not urgent, does not restore full emergency services at the Downe.

She said the modern local hospital has the ability to provide an A&E service, one that would ease the pressure at the Ulster where staff continue to struggle to meet demand.

Health chiefs say there has been a significant increase in the number of attendances at the Ulster’s emergency department, which are 15% above the same period in 2019. 

They insist that the Downe is very much open and providing excellent, safe, effective services, utilising the skills and supporting the infrastructure available with its urgent care centre, with officials working hard to improve and expand services at the hospital.

Mrs Higgins said her son sustained his ankle injury just 10 minutes into an U-15 match last Thursday evening after jumping for a high ball and landing on the rock hard playing surface.

Odhrán was taken home and while his mum placed ice on his ankle, she was advised by a nursing friend to contact the out-of-hours GP service, with a doctor subsequently advising her to take her son to the Ulster to ensure that staff could fit a special boot before his ankle swelled further.

“My husband and I arrived around 9.40pm and the first thing that struck me was that there was no one on the door at A&E,” Mrs Higgins recalled.

“It was literally a free-for-all as you just walked straight in. We could have had Covid or anything and I went up to the desk and asked if my son could see a nurse practitioner, I was told that the staff member had finished at 9pm.

“I also enquired about the children’s A&E service at the Ulster but was told that this wasn’t available due to staff shortages, with the person manning the reception desk warning me that I could be at the hospital for hours.

“We took our seats and I was shocked that there were no social distancing measures in place, with people literally sitting on top of one another. There was also one poor lady across from me who kept taking her mask off to cough which was obviously very concerning for me.”

Mrs Higgins said during the five hours she was at the Ulster, nothing was being cleaned or wiped down, including splashes of blood on the treatment room floor, with bins overflowing and one young girl having to rush to the toilet — which all females had to use — to be violently sick.

The Downpatrick mum said she had no issue with the A&E staff from her ringside seat and could see how under pressure they were.

“The staff were fantastic and I felt so sorry for them. While they had their masks on, they looked so drained and were like robots going back and forward,” she continued.

“The annoying thing is that if you live in Belfast you could go to the Royal Victoria or Ulster A&E,  but for us in this part of the world, we have to traipse the whole way up to Dundonald while we have an excellent hospital in Downpatrick, which had its emergency services withdrawn. They should be reinstated. How can this not happen with the Ulster A&E is continually under pressure?”

Mrs Higgins also revealed that it took staff an hour to find a set of crutches for her son before he could leave the Ulster Hospital.

She added: “I took so much in while waiting in the emergency department and could not believe what I was seeing. The staff were under immense pressure and one nurse told me that they were really short staffed.

“The staff were brilliant, but the experience in the Ulster emergency department was anything but. What I witnessed highlighted the need to have A&E services restored to the Downe Hospital. While

I understand that the hospital cannot deal with all emergencies, it would have been more than capable of dealing what happened to my son who would have been seen right away.

“Indeed, I suspect that many of those in the Ulster Hospital’s waiting room last week could have been dealt with by staff at the Downe’s A&E department which would have considerably eased the pressure.”