2022 is officially the worst year on record for the hospital trolley crisis at St Luke’s General.
42 people waiting for a bed there today brings the annual total to nearly six thousand – and that’s with ten days to go before 2023 kicks in.
The facility for Carlow and Kilkenny’s one of the busiest of its kind in the country this week.
A surge in presentations at the Emergency Department there prompted an appeal to be issued yesterday for people to avoid it and seek alternative care options where possible.
The numbers on trolleys today (Wednesday, 21st December) are slightly down on yesterday from 54 to 42 but the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has also released their analysis for the year which shows that to date 5 thousand 896 patients were left waiting on a bed at the local hospital in 2022.
That’s well ahead of the previous busiest year in 2019 when 4,075 were on trolleys in St Luke’s.
The INMO says this overcrowding milestone is not something to be celebrated.
