Galway Bay fm newsroom - Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe is among the five hospitals nationwide which experienced their worst-ever overcrowding this September with 161 people on trolleys.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation say in Cork University Hospital and the Mercy University Hospital as well as Portiuncula, Letterkenny and University Hospital Kerry all saw higher numbers of people waiting for a bed than any other year.
In University Hospital Galway, there were nearly forty times as many patients on trolleys this month compared with September 2020 at 805 patients versus 21 last September.
The figures come as the INMO revealed that four nurses in University Hospital Galway have quit, due to conditions in the hospital’s temporary emergency department.
UHG was the fourth most overcrowded in the country this month, after Cork, Limerick and Letterkenny.
Overall, it is the second-worst-ever September for overcrowding in Ireland, with 8,414 on trolleys in September 2021. The worst-ever September was in 2019, with 10,641 on trolleys.
A spokesperson for the INMO says overcrowding figures reached record lows in 2019 and 2020 due to the pandemic, but is warning that hospitals are "returning to the bad old days".
