University Hospital Limerick (UHL) took more than a year and a half to apologise to a patient who said he was subjected to “incredibly degrading” behaviour when staff cracked jokes and laughed at him while he was receiving personal care, a tribunal has heard.
At an equality hearing earlier this year, a solicitor for the Health Service Executive said it was accepted “without equivocation that the treatment and behaviours complained of were unacceptable”.
However, the it denied discriminating against the patient, Michael O’Dowd, on the basis of disability while he was an inpatient at UHL from June 7th, 2022, to July 1st, 2023, or in how it handled his complaint.
In a decision published on Thursday regarding a statutory complaint by Mr O’Dowd, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) found while he was “understandably upset”, he was out of time to pursue a complaint of alleged discrimination.
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Mr O’Dowd, who represented himself before the tribunal, used a text-to-speech machine called a light-writer to address the hearing in March. He alleged he was “treated differently because of his wheelchair and speech difficulties”.
He said that while he was undergoing a “personal care” procedure at the hospital on June 7th, 2022, a nurse and two healthcare assistants “made jokes” about him which “violated his dignity”.
He said that after 12 days of bed rest, staff put him in a wheelchair without appropriate support which led to him “almost falling out of the chair”.
Staff were “laughing at him and joking about him despite the fact he could have been seriously injured”, the tribunal’s decision document recorded of his claim.
He also said that despite telling hospital staff repeatedly they were causing him pain and distress by moving him “excessively” and that he could move himself, the workers “did not listen”. Nor did staff comply with his “numerous requests” that his tablets not be crushed up, he said.
Helen Naughton, an assistant director of nursing at UHL, gave evidence that the complaint was “very serious” but that she had been “unable to identify” the staff Mr O’Dowd had named in his complaint.
The tribunal noted that Ms Naughton admitted the delay was “largely down to her”. She said clinical risk in the UHL emergency department had taken priority and that “all complaints took a back seat”.
Mr O’Dowd told the commission he felt “nauseous and sick” to recall what happened. He said it was “incredibly degrading to have to listen to [UHL] staff laugh and joke about his personal care”.
He said that having “trusted UHL to assist and support him” he felt he “cannot now trust [the hospital] with his care”. He added that the experience had damaged his self-esteem and confidence and had “become an angrier person” as a result.
Cliona Kenny of Comyn Kelleher Tobin, solicitor for the respondent, submitted: “It is accepted without equivocation that the treatment and behaviours complained of were unacceptable.”
She also said it was acknowledged that the complaint “was not dealt with in a timely manner due to significant staffing pressures and clinical demands” at UHL at the time.
In her decision, adjudication officer Ewa Sobanska wrote that she had no jurisdiction to investigate alleged discrimination during Mr O’Dowd’s hospital stay in 2022 on foot of his complaint in April 2024 because of the passage of time.
She wrote that Mr O’Dowd was “understandably upset by the events” but that his complaint was “based on his speculation that the adverse treatment arose as a consequence of his disability”, and dismissed the complaint.
