Almost 600 patients were forced to wait on trolleys for admission to Letterkenny University Hospital in January 2019.
The figures were released by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation today, which showed an improvement on last year’s trolley records.
There were 587 patients on trolleys at LUH in the first month of this year, compared to 671 in January 2018 and 552 in January 2017.
This year’s records put LUH at number four on the list of the five most overcrowded hospitals in Ireland so far this year. University Hospital Limerick topped the list with 970 patients on trolleys last month.
Over 10,000 admitted patients were recorded waiting on beds across all Irish hospitals in January 2019. This represents a 55% increase on the number of patients waiting for beds in January 10 years ago and a 30% increase on January five years ago.
The INMO has highlighted that the figures are an underestimate because they are not including January 30th, when INMO members were on strike.
INMO general secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha said: “Over 10,000 hospital patients didn’t even have a bed last month in Ireland’s health service. “At the heart of this problem is understaffing. We simply cannot recruit and retain enough nurses and midwives on these wages.
“Ireland’s nurses and midwives are no longer prepared to tolerate these conditions, for themselves or for their patients.”
