HSE ambulances Thurles

Grab All Association

https://tippfm.com/featured-2/tipperary-ambulance-unavailable-fethard-man-ambulances-deployed-south-east/

so a Thurles based ambulance was covering Kilkenny, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow. No ambulances were available for Thurles and surrounding areas. Mainstream media again silent about this just like Limerick City a few years ago. It’s only a matter of time before someone seriously ill dies again.

We have an Ambulance service that is dangerously over stretched, some of the worst over crowding in hospitals since the pandemic began, fire engines unable to be deployed due to a lack of staff, navy ships tied up in harbour due to a staff shortage in the naval service, infrastructure projects continually put off or delayed, boil notices in place due to Irish water being unable to provide clean drinking water to areas, thousands of students being offered third/fourth/fifth choice courses due to lack of university places.......

Every piece of fabric this country has is straining and about to burst, yet you are more likely to read about petrol queues in the UK, or how wonderful Matt Damon thinks Ireland is.

The Irish media really is letting the people down.

L1011

You aren't going to get ambulance drivers, naval recruits, fire service recruits etc without pay rises.

And if you want to see something that will get the media and public angry, it's public sector pay rises.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117948646#Comment_117948646

the problem is, there is a massive disconnect in the public sector between what the people at the coal face earn and the people at the top. If you just look at healthcare, we have the head of the HSE and the head of the department of health (why exactly do we have both them?) earning over €700k between them and a senior nurse on €50k.

Similarly, Firefighters earn around €40k per year, yet the CEO of Dublin City council was earning €175k back in 2014. god knows what he is on now.

There is money for salaries, it just seems to be focused in the wrong places.

salonfire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117948646#Comment_117948646

I don't think that's true, there's competitions held to try wittle down the numbers for recruitment into the emergency services.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117948646#Comment_117948646

Depends on which parts of the public sector to be honest. For whatever reason some of the unions seems to have got far better pay and benefits for their members than others. Personally I'd have no qualms about seeing the Army getting a pay rise as they appear to be particularly badly paid.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117958962#Comment_117958962

To filter out those that are unsuitable, not due to oversubscription of those qualified. The latter used to be the case but not anymore.

BrianD3

This was raised by Barry Cowen in the Dail and different areas were mentioned. Mention of ambulances being called from Cavan to towns in Cowen's constituency. In that case , it sounds like it is not just an isolated issue. A new low for our "health service" if true. We have grown accustomed to the sh*tshow that is elective care in the public system. Defenders would often hit back with arguments that if you have a heart attack and need an ambulance, the service is good and the private sector will be nowhere to be seen.

If there are systemic issues with the national ambulance service then it shows how fcuked we are. What's the solution? Maybe we should do as we often do - setup a "charity", pay the CEO 150k, beg for money and provide a half arsed ambulance service?

Grab All Association

Disband the National Ambulance Service and merge it with the local Fire Brigade (e.g Tipperary Fire Brigade)

Triage calls* and only send an ambulance out if really needed. Fire brigade vehicle can be used in most situations, cuts, sprains etc. i seen first hand in Miami how this works, for non serious injuries the fire Brigade would attend in a fire truck/jeep.

* woman here in my neighbourhood that purposely threatens to take overdoses to get admitted to Ennis mental hospital. They bring her by ambulance from Thurles to Clonmel STGH who then send her to Ennis by taxi. She is later discharged that day and brought back home to Thurles. This needs to stop. Having ambulance services by the local fire brigade, the HSE would have to provide an alternative service to these hypochondriacs freeing up an ambulance for a real emergency.

20silkcut

Is the shortage of ambulances leading to an increase in helicopter airlifts? Know of 3 or 4 helicopter airlifts that happened locally this year. Never heard of one in my lifetime before that.

Mal-Adjusted

They were talking about this on the radio last week. one example given was a call out to Feakle, a small village in east Clare. The ambulance was dispatched from Birr, over an hour away despite the presence of an ambulance station in Scariff, about 8 km from Feakle. Apparently, the Scariff ambulamce had been dispatched to Athlone!

pms7

From my recent experience in CUH Cork where my mother went in by ambulance, there is not a shortage of ambulances. I saw 4 waiting a few hours to hand over patients to the hospital. Appalling mismanagement of resources. One nurse or even 1 ambulance crew could have looked after the 4 patients while waiting for hospital to accept them and left a few ambulances out on the road where undoubtedly there was someone desperately waiting for one.

Yurt2

At the risk of poking a bear, yet another negative consequence of Ireland's unusually dispersed population pattern for a developed country.

Sam Russell

The ambulance situation is quite clearly an example of an appalling management of the call out system, and a system designed to fail.

Surely before despatch, a simple calculation of its expected arrival time would remove nearly all of the daft tasking of an ambulance sent from Gorey to Donegal or Drogheda to Ennis. It would be better to say that no ambulance is currently available, and a call back will be made when one is.

Who designed such a system? They should be failed their Junior Cert Business option.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118054427#Comment_118054427

As another poster said, it is has little to do with the management of ambulances, but an awful lot to do with the stupid planning process that allowed countless one-off houses around the country in a dispersed haphazard manner. You don't see this in any decently planned European country.

Sam Russell

The one off houses is obviously a problem, but not having enough ambulances or hospitals is another.

Dispatching an ambulance to go on a five hour journey is just nuts. Leaving the home turf of the dispatched ambulance without cover is bordering on the criminal. That is a management and systems failure.

Grab All Association

TippFm

Deputy Lowry told the Taoiseach of one recent issue, which led to the death of an elderly woman.

“Two hours before this woman died, an ambulance was en route to transport her to people. In this case, the ambulance was stood down and diverted to care for a man with a back injury.

“When the paramedics arrived, the man walked out of his home and stepped into the ambulance. When a crew eventually arrived to the woman, she was carried out on a stretcher. This was the last time she saw her home.

“The description given of the man’s injury pushed him up the priority list. It also pushed her down.”

20silkcut

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118114092#Comment_118114092

Don’t agree. Ireland is not an unusually large or dispersed country that it should cause such problems in fact it’s quite the opposite. It’s quite compact. It should not be difficult to have good ambulance cover. Dispersed housing pattern should not make any difference to the radius an ambulance can cover. If there is a road to it they should be able to get there. The Eircode system is a big improvement in this regard too.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118168579#Comment_118168579

Dispersed housing pattern makes all the difference. It is not just the radius an ambulance can cover that determines cost of provision, but the number of trips per day it can make.

20silkcut

I see your point, but I still don’t think it’s a particular disadvantage in comparison to other European countries. First of all there are less traffic issues in dispersed rural areas. We don’t have any real wilderness areas or big mountain ranges to negotiate. It should not be a logistical nightmare to service. 100 odd miles would nearly have you coast to coast in Ireland it’s a very compact country. Look at the likes of Norway and Sweden that have towns and cities and dispersed villages 1500 miles north of their capital cities.

Sam Russell

Well, getting an ambulance to a remote place like Fethard from either Wexford or Waterford will take 40 mins and it is only 40 km or so, so quite local. When you live in more remote places like Donegall or Connemara then 40 min wait for an ambulance might seem to be quick. It is not just distance, but the speed that can be achieved on the boreens that are provided, particularly the last 5 kms. Traffic is not the issue - it is the quality of the roads going to one-off houses that have been built remotely.

Dispersed populations require more ambulances and they require more sophisticated management to cope with the extra numbers, and better dispatching systems. We appear to have neither enough ambulances, nor a proper system of using the ones we have. An overcrowded A&E only exacerbates the problem where ambulances have to queue at A&E while they wait for the A&E dept to admit the patient and return the trolley.

Much of the problems with the HSE come down to poor management systems, not inadequate funding. In fact more funding gives rise to more inefficient management.