A senior nurse at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) has described the emergency department as a ‘war zone’ on the night 16-year-old Aoife Johnston died from sepsis.
Katherine Skelly, Clinical Nurse Manager 2, was on duty on the night that Aoife attended and said that the weekend proved to be the busiest on record until then, with 160 patients in the Emergency Department.
“What I observed was akin to a war zone – every area was overcrowded with patients. Trolleys were placed back-to-back and lined either side of the corridors. Every available floor space was taken, patients were lying and sitting in every nook and cranny,” she said.
Ms Skelly said that there were 15 nurses on duty that night but the correct allocation was 20 and, given the volume of patients presenting at the ED due to falls and accidents on icy roads and footpaths, she estimated that they would have needed 30 nurses.
She said that such was the volume of patients that 67 Category 2 Patients – seriously ill patients who should be seen by a doctor within ten to fifteen minutes – were waiting for ten hours, which was posing a serious safety risk to patients.
She said that while they were not dealing with any single major incident like a bus crash, there were so many individual incidents that she believed it was the equivalent of a major incident, which prompted her to ring the ED Consultant Dr Jim Gray.
“I escalated to him the risks to patients, the volume and acuity and how unsafe the department was and requested that he come in. He declined – the conversation was brief – he said he had been in already that day and would be in again in the morning. I was disappointed.”
Ms Skelly was giving evidence at the inquest into the death of Aoife Johnston from Shannon who died from sepsis at UHL on December 19th, 2022 almost 48 hours after she was presented at the hospital’s emergency department where she was left waiting for 12 hours before she saw a doctor.
Ms Skelly said that she had since left University Hospital Limerick and was now working elsewhere but she had never worked in an Emergency Department because of Aoife’s death.
“Absolutely it broke me personally and professionally that that poor girl died,” she said.
