Record high attendances at the Emergency Department (ED) in University Hospital Limerick over recent days have led to the declaration of a major internal incident.
The unprecedented level of ED attendance is driven by a surge in patients with respiratory infections, including COVID-19, flu and RSV.
Actions that have been taken to address the situation:
•    Extra staff including nurses and doctors have been asked to present to the hospital for duty
•    Staff are being redeployed to care for additional patients in the ED
•    Additional surge beds are being opened in Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s Hospitals
•    Converting day beds in UHL to inpatient beds
•    Focus on discharging patients to home and the community
•    Converting a ward in Croom Hospital for medical patients
•    Only urgent elective surgery is going ahead in UHL over the coming days
•    All outpatient appointments for UHL are cancelled for tomorrow Tuesday 3rd Jan
Anyone presenting to ED today with a less urgent condition is going to face an exceptionally long wait for care. We urge the public to consider all available healthcare alternatives to ED.
Less acutely unwell patients are asked to first consider our Injury Units, GPs, out-of-hours GP services and pharmacists before attending ED.
Injury Units in Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s are operating as normal. Opening hours for Ennis and Nenagh Injury Units are 8am -8pm and St John’s Injury Unit 8am-7pm. For full contacts for the units, and the services available there, please see: https://www2.hse.ie/services/injury-units/
We apologise to every patient who is currently experiencing a long wait for admission at UHL, and for the inconvenience and frustration this causes for patients’ loved ones.
In addition, due to the high number of patients with flu and Covid-19 and a number of ongoing outbreaks, all visiting to UHL has been restricted. We regret the distress or inconvenience our visiting ban causes for patients and their loved ones, but it is necessary given the high levels of flu and Covid-19.
The only exceptions to the ban are as follows:
*Parents visiting children in hospital
*People assisting confused patients (e.g. dementia)
*People visiting patients who are critically unwell or at end of life (on a case-by-case basis)
All these exemptions are limited to one person per patient only.