An ambulance transporting a seriously ill patient to hospital down on a motorway in Co Clare yesterday.
The ambulance had responded to an emergency call in the Ennis area at around 6.20am and was transporting the patient to University Hospital Limerick (UHL) when the vehicle broke down. It’s understood the patient was a man in his 70’s.
The incident occurred at around 7.45am on the M18 near Shannon when the paramedic driving quickly realised the vehicle was losing power.
The paramedic managed to bring the ambulance to a safe stop in the hard shoulder and contacted the ambulance control centre to advise them of the problem.
The second paramedic continued to battle to resuscitate the gravely ill patient in the rear of the vehicle while another ambulance was dispatched to the scene.
In a statement the National Ambulance Service (NAS) confirmed it received an emergency 999/112 call at 06:09 yesterday.
“An emergency ambulance and a rapid response vehicle (RRV) with an advanced paramedic on board were immediately dispatched to the incident. Both resources arrived at the scene at 06:19.
While on route to UHL, with the patient on board, the ambulance broke down on the M18 at 07:44. The NAS National Emergency Operations Centre immediately dispatched an emergency ambulance from Limerick to assist, and arrived at 08:03. The patient was transferred to the Limerick ambulance and left the scene for UHL at 08:05. The emergency ambulance arrived at UHL at 08.18,” statement said.
It’s not known whether the patients chances of survival were affected by the ambulance breaking down while its not clear whether they died on the roadside or later at the hospital.
No details about the patient have been released while the HSE wouldn’t confirm or deny that the patient had died citing ‘patient confidentiality.’
It’s understood that the ambulance at the centre of this latest incident is four years old.
There have been several high profile cases of ambulances breaking down while transporting seriously ill patients.
In July of last year, an ambulance transporting a patient in cardiac arrest broke down in Co Louth.
Just a few months earlier, an ambulance transferring a seriously ill newborn baby from Cork to Dublin broke down while a replacement ambulance sent to complete the journey also suffered technical problems. As a result, the transfer took two hours more than it should have.
In 2013, a patient being rushed from Cork to Dublin for a lung transplant had to complete his journey in a Garda patrol car after the ambulance on which he was travelling broke down.
Also in 2013 an ambulance suffered mechanical problems on the M18 near the Limerick/Clare border while responding to an emergency call at Knockbeg Point in Shannon.
A few months earlier in March, an ambulance transferring a patient from Ennis to Galway broke down on the M18 near Gort.
The ambulance had previously been based in both Limerick and Tipperary and repeatedly gave crews problems. Staff at one ambulance station refused to drive the vehicle which was later reassigned to Kilrush ambulance base in Clare.