Wexford Hospital consultant calls for centralised bed bureau in wake of fire

Emergency medicine consultant at Wexford General Hospital Dr Mick Molloy has called for a centralised bed bureau which could allocate hospital beds rather than staff at a hospital having to phone around.

Dr Molloy told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that one of the lessons learned from the emergency response to the fire at Wexford hospital on Wednesday was the necessity to centralise the many offers of beds that came from hospitals around the country.

A centralised bed bureau would take a lot of the pressure off staff who have to take time out from caring for a patient to try to find a bed, he said. At present staff have to phone around different hospitals seeking a bed in such circumstances.

Dr Molloy said the response by hospital staff and emergency services this week showed that the plans and training that had been put in place had worked to make sure no one had come to harm. “Nobody was injured, not a patient or a member of staff, that’s phenomenal.”

Interruptions undermine workplace focus and productivity

---

How long might commuters be waiting for the Dart to Drogheda?

---

From Nicola Coughlan’s hunks in landscaped gardens to Cillian Murphy’s gripping gangster romp: Patrick Freyne’s costume drama guide

---

Europa League final: Ally McCoist enjoys the Dublin buzz as Lookman KOs Leverkusen

---

[ Wexford hospital patient: ‘You could smell smoke and the alarms were going off’ ]

The emergency department at Wexford hospital cannot reopen yet, he explained as there were no beds open to which they could admit patients if necessary. Twenty per cent of patients who attend emergency departments are admitted.

Maternity services at the hospital will resume today and once wards reopen efforts will be made to repatriate patients who had been transferred to hospitals elsewhere, he said.

Until the emergency department reopens the first port of call for people will be GPs, he said, if the situation is more serious then they will be directed to hospitals in Waterford, Kilkenny and Dublin.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar will visit the site on Friday. He said on Thursday that the facility “can and will recover and will be back to full service as soon as is possible”. He said the “full restoration of all services might take some time”, but that, he said, was the objective and the Government would “do whatever is required” in the aftermath of the incident.

[ Wexford General Hospital fire: ‘We’re in a sort of limbo,’ says local doctor ]

Meanwhile, staff at St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny have told of how they found out on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon that Wexford General Hospital was being evacuated because of the fire.

Staff who were due to go off shift stayed on, and others who were off duty came into hospital to work.

According to St Luke’s Hospital general manager Anne Slattery, staff were not aware of how many patients would be transferred. St Luke’s immediately sent out messages on its social media channels asking the public to avoid its emergency departments and acute medical assessment unit (AMAU) if their conditions were not urgent.

The first patients from Wexford arrived at around 9pm and the last one at 1am. In the end 16 were transferred including six mothers who had recently given birth and their babies. The mothers and babies came in a minibus and many expect to be discharged from hospital by Friday morning.

“We are fortunate that we had capacity in our maternity unit. The women would have had a recent delivery and couldn’t be discharged. They needed the extra day or two to recover,” she said.

“In the general medicine side we had some vacated ward space for when we moved to a new block.”

The one patient who was in an intensive care unit is in a comfortable condition.

St Luke’s remains on alert for more patients until services resume in Wexford.

“From our perspective, for the next day or two, there could be an extra push on the system, but nothing we couldn’t cope with,” said Ms Slattery.