Limerick hospital staff describe being ‘haunted’ by teenager’s death – The Irish Times

A health care provider who handled Aoife Johnston (16) earlier than her dying at College Hospital Limerick (UHL) wept within the witness field on the teenager’s inquest, telling Limerick coroner John McNamara that the emergency division on the hospital was “not a protected setting” for sufferers.

Dr Leandri Card instructed of how she was attempting to handle 191 emergency division (ED) sufferers on her personal, and that she and ED nurses had been “overwhelmed” on the night time Aoife offered on the hospital.

The South African native, who was working as a senior home officer (SHO) in UHL’s ED, mentioned “each inch of the ground area” was taken up by sufferers on trolleys when Aoife offered on December seventeenth, 2022.

“It was like a conflict zone. It was an unimaginable state of affairs,” she mentioned.

Dr Card instructed the inquest, which is being held at Limerick Coroner’s Courtroom, in Kilmallock, that attributable to overcrowding and stress on workers, she and different medical doctors routinely prescribed remedy for ED sufferers with out first seeing or analyzing them.

“It occurs on each shift, on day-after-day,” she mentioned.

Dr Card agreed with Damien Tansey, senior counsel and solicitor representing the Johnston household, that this was “not finest follow”.

She mentioned that regardless of prescribing antibiotics for Aoife at 6.40am on December 18th, to deal with suspected meningitis, {the teenager} didn’t obtain this remedy for an hour and quarter-hour.

Dr Card mentioned the drugs, which it was heard would have doubtlessly saved her life, “wasn’t given as instantly because it ought to have”.

The witness mentioned she didn’t have entry to the place medicines had been stored. Pharmaceuticals had been usually administered by nurses, however Dr Card indicated she was not blaming anybody for the delay. “It’s common that it doesn’t occur as instantly because it ought to, because the nurses are overwhelmed.”

She agreed she was nonetheless “haunted and troubled” by Aoife’s dying.

She mentioned medical doctors routinely “don’t have sufficient time” to learn affected person medical charts earlier than prescribing medicines to them; as an alternative they’ve temporary exchanges with nurses who advise them of the affected person’s signs.

Dr Card additionally agreed she was “by herself” as the one SHO on the ED ground on the night time Aoife was introduced in by her mother and father, and he or she was attempting to “handle 191 sufferers”.

Podcast: What’s going fallacious at College Hospital Limerick?

Wiping away tears, Dr Card described as “insupportable” the state of affairs within the Limerick ED.

Aoife offered at UHL at 5.40pm on December seventeenth, 2022. The hospital’s protocols on sepsis, which require sepsis-queried sufferers to be seen urgently, weren’t adopted, the inquest heard.

Aoife was not triaged till 7.15pm that night time, and he or she didn’t obtain antibiotics till it was too late. She died at UHL on December nineteenth.

Dr Card agreed she had been severely emotionally impacted by Aoife’s dying.

She mentioned it was “instrumental” in her resolution to give up the HSE to work in a personal well being clinic, and he or she mentioned she has not labored in an emergency division since.

Nicola Quinn, assistant director of nursing at UHL, agreed with Mr Tansey that circumstances within the ED had been “positively harmful” for sufferers.

Ms Quinn agreed there was “no handover” of Aoife’s case when workers got here on obligation on December 18th, which Ms Quinn described as “a miss”.

She accepted she had a “managerial function within the emergency division”, and was liable for helping nurses within the ED, however she argued she had not been conscious of Aoife nor her situation on December seventeenth, when time was of the essence in saving her.

[ Aoife Johnston inquest: ‘We watched our daughter die – I wouldn’t wish it on anyone’ ]

She mentioned {that a} “fixed conveyor belt” of “class two” sufferers, which had been deemed to be dangerously unwell sufferers and which included Aoife, in addition to multiples of sufferers with bone fractures attributable to falls on ice throughout a extreme climate alert, had “overwhelmed” workers.

UHL senior medical nurse supervisor Alison Nolan agreed with Mr Tansey there had been a “breakdown in communications” amongst nursing workers in circumstances that had been like a “conflict zone”.

Ms Nolan, in reply to Mr Tansey, mentioned that “undoubtedly” Aoife would have survived had she obtained the antibiotics she urgently wanted extra rapidly, and which Mr Tansey mentioned had been simply accessible to workers.

Mr Tansey mentioned it was accepted that “pathogens” that had been “fuelling” Aoife’s sepsis, which had been traced in her blood, would have been defeated by the antibiotics.

“Aoife Johnston was the sickest affected person within the casualty division,” Mr Tansey put it to Ms Nolan.

“In hindsight, sure,” Ms Nolan replied.

Ms Nolan fought again tears as she agreed Aoife’s dying had left her “haunted”.