LAST week the ‘Herald shared yet another story of a local patient’s horrific experience of having to travel from Fermanagh to Derry for emergency general surgery (EGS), just as this paper has been reporting for almost two years now since the suspension of EGS at the SWAH.
As happens often, this story prompted significant empathy among other local patients and their families who had experienced similar, including from one local pensioner who contacted the ‘Herald to say last week’s patient experience was “a carbon copy” of what his wife had gone through.
Willing to share their story with this paper, the man outlined how his wife had been left suffering with a hospital-acquired infection for months after her emergency surgery, which doctors believe she picked up during her long wait at the Altnagelvin emergency department (ED).
Just like thousands of other local patients who have been transferred to Derry over the past 21 months, the woman’s journey began at the SWAH with a common yet potentially deadly problem that required immediate surgery.
After much “over and back” between the surgical consultant at the Enniskillen hospital and the surgical team at Altnagelvin, it was decided she was too ill to travel by private vehicle and needed to be transferred via ambulance.
However, as is again often the case, this urgency appeared to evaporate on arrival at Altnagelvin, where she had to wait for 23 hours in an overcrowded ED for admission.
“The A&E was absolutely packed. It was running into a Friday night,” said the man, who added the seats were extremely uncomfortable.
He added, “I remember talking to one of the nurses and she was saying when that A&E at Altnagelvin was built it was really only set up for 30 people. That Friday night in Derry there were 220 people in the A&E.”
Again like many other patients the ‘Herald has spoken with, the man’s wife spent the many hours awaiting admission alongside other very sick patients. During this time one of the patients she had been speaking with, who was hooked up to a heart monitor, actually flat-lined in the ED and required emergency treatment right in front of her.
The man, who had checked into a hotel in Derry during his wife’s stay, said after she finally was admitted and received her surgery, it was discovered her condition had reached the point where it was almost fatal.
The woman was discharged a few days later and, having delayed a planned trip to visit family due to the surgery, the couple travelled to England the following week.
“Within a day I was taking her back to hospital, she was in so much pain,” he said.
At the English ED the woman was diagnosed with an infection the doctors believed she had acquired while in Altnagelvin, and she required several months of strong antibiotic treatment to treat the ongoing problem.
“I was just absolutely dismayed about the whole process, from the beginning to end,” the man said. “I was just appalled at what happened.
“The staff, generally, were wonderful but the system is obviously seriously, seriously broken.
“The availability of beds is clearly far from adequate at Altnagelvin, given they’ve got to take all these people for all the different areas that aren’t getting the proper coverage.”
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