15 people waiting for beds in Drogheda Hospital this morning

There were 15 people waiting for a bed in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda this morning according to the INMO’s Trolley Watch.

Nationally, the figures show that 595 admitted patients are without a bed today (January 18). 

This week the Democrat reported that the hospital has been dealing with an ambulance bypass protocol which has seen critically ill and unstable patients from Meath bypassing Navan Hospital and being brought to Drogheda.

Meath TD Peadar Tóibín claimed that some patients from Meath were being brought by ambulance to Drogheda to be triaged and then sent back to Navan A&E for treatment by ambulance or by taxi. 

“If they are being brought by taxi a medical professional has to accompany them and then that medical professional is travelling back to Drogheda by taxi. 

“What should be a single patient journey to A&E now takes three individual journeys.”

"If you were to design the most inefficient and wasteful pathways for a patient to get to an A&E this would be it.”

Dundalk court: Suspended sentence for having cannabis for sale or supply

Gardai investigate unauthorised taking of a car in Dundalk

The figures come as record numbers of overcrowding were recorded by the organisation in 2022, with a total of 118,662 patients waiting without hospital beds throughout the year. 

INMO General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said: 

"The level of overcrowding we are seeing in our hospitals is still too high. We have not seen numbers like we have seen today at this point in January since the INMO began counting trolleys in 2006.

"Nurses and midwives are working in impossible conditions to provide the safest care they can but it is clear that their workplaces are dangerous. 

"Hospitals are not just places of care, they are workplaces. Basic safety is not guaranteed in understaffed and overcrowded wards and emergency departments. The Health and Safety Authority and HIQA must intervene through increased planned and unplanned inspections."