Letterkenny hospital tells staff not to ask patients to lie on floor after man suffers injuries

Staff at Letterkenny University Hospital have been told not to ask patients to lie on the floor.

The recommendation was made following an incident in which a patient who had fainted was asked to lie on the floor of the emergency department because no bed or chair was available.

The patient fainted again while on the floor and woke up with a black eye, a nosebleed and a pounding headache, he has told The Irish Times.

He does not recall what happened to him. But the hospital said he sustained the injuries when falling on to his forehead during his attendance at the hospital in September 2022.

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“They put me lying on the floor of the hallway. It was very busy, with people going up and down all the time. The next thing I remember, I woke up in the resus room with six people around me, rushing me off for a brain scan,” said the man.

“A nurse told me, ‘you got more than you bargained for there’. But she didn’t explain further.”

Several weeks after he visited the emergency department (ED), the patient received a call from the hospital about his son, Adrian. He does not have a son by this name. And he received a second call about “Adrian” the following day.

“This was an administrative error and should not have occurred,” the report into a complaint made by the patient states. ED nursing staff have been told to check patient information before ringing a patient or relative “so that there is no reoccurrence in the future”.

A month later, the patient received a further call from a consultant at the hospital telling him to come in for an operation. “That wasn’t for me either,” said the patient.

The man, who does not wish to be identified, attended the ED of the hospital in September 2022 after vomiting blood. As his bloods were being taken, he “slid from the chair in a controlled fashion”, according to a consultant who examined his complaint.

“He was helped by two people and was for trolley transfer but regained consciousness in a few seconds. He walked to the plinth to lie in [the] supine position for further observation and the blood sample to be re-attempted but while he was waiting he fell from the plinth again and fell on to his forehead with brief loss of consciousness and minor self-limiting epistaxis [nosebleed].”

The report says staff should try to lay patients on a trolley when taking bloods, especially when they say they are feeling unwell.

“I recommend that no member of the medical team asks a patient to lie on the floor”, it said.

An investigation into CCTV footage from the ED remained ongoing at the time the report was compiled. The patient said he has heard nothing more from the hospital.

The hospital apologised to the patient last July for “deficits in care” during his attendance at the ED. “I can assure you this is not the level of service we would wish to provide,” a manager in the emergency department told him.

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