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EMYVALE
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Centre Of Excellence.
News is filtering on on this Nov 3rd that Our Lady Of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda has had to close three wards, cease outpatient clinics and stop all, except essential visitors to the hospital due to a serious outbreak of C.Dif in the hospital. As well it appears that only certain admissions will be accepted until further notice. It has also been announced that two patients have died and that the Coroner has been notified but there is no indication at this time that the deaths were as a direct result of the serious outbreak of the hospital acquired infection. No doubt many are waiting anxiously for the outcome of that enquiry.
However we cannot say that we are surprised with the news of this outbreak as this hospital has been featuring very poorly on the Rate your Hospital part of the www.iriishhealth.com website since it began. Indeed the number of stories of problems in that hospital has been huge and it seemed that it was only a matter of time before something very serious hit the headlines. Many patients can retell their own harrowing stories of the time spent by them or a loved one in Drogheda and that includes the five months at the end of my own mother’s life. The family submitted a written dossier outlining 11 serious events of unsafe and sub-optimal care received by my mother. The hospital authorities accepted the complaints after investigation and presented the family with details of how they were going to ensure that these problems never arose again for another patient. Unfortunately another family came to us about four months later with some similar complaints. We told them to send them in to the Hospital authorities in written form but we do not know what happened after that.
Taking all of this into consideration one can imagine how difficult is has been for our family, and many others who have had the experience, to accept that Drogheda is to be our ‘Centre of Excellence’. How could the authorities expect that people could turn a blind eye to what they had seen and experienced? How could our TDs try to convince us that this would all be a ‘better service’ than what we had in Monaghan? How could they claim that this would be a ‘SAFER’ service than what we were accustomed to in Monaghan. This latest incident in Drogheda Hospital will not inspire confidence in it and will certainly not make us feel safer going there in an emergency or for any treatment. Surely it is time that the Government, the HSE and our TDs admitted that they were wrong.
Your comments are welcome.