Revealed: Schoolgirl Aoife Johnston, who died from meningitis, waited in A&E for 12 hours as sepsis went untreated
by PoppedCork
Revealed: Schoolgirl Aoife Johnston, who died from meningitis, waited in A&E for 12 hours as sepsis went untreated
by PoppedCork
21 comments
Tragic
Is there no vaccine or over the counter treatments
Scary stuff.
Shocking and appalling. So big of Bernard Gloster to offer to meet the family privately, it’s the bloody least he could do.
should be a charge similar to corporate manslaughter, and for all similar cases what about HSE management derived manslaughter.
A case where triaging failed? Surely that would be an actual emergency?
I said it before I will say it again – it is NOT normal to wait 12 hours in A&E, this doesn’t happen in many other countries that are perceived to be less developed…
I’ve never waited less than 12 hours in A&E in Ireland. It’s absolutely maddening. I cut myself a while back (by accident, not emo) and my first thought was “oh fuck not A&E”.
I remember reading when it happened that her father was going absolutely mental in the hospital demanding that she get treated because she was clearly in a bad way. Worst nightmare stuff..I knew her sister in college as well.
Few weeks back 4 year old was complaining about sore neck and a headache. Laya suspected meningitis.
Off to tallaght.
Got there at 9pm, got home at 3am. Was looked at for a grand total of 10 minutes and sent home. No help or advice given.
That’s absolutely horrendous. My condolences to her family and friends.
The state of the A&Es is just unacceptable. Limerick has a particularly signifiant problem and it’s followed by Cork, which comes down to the HSE simply not investing adequately in hospitals in either city and completely failing to plan for growing demand.
Do they take the most pessimistic growth forecast possible every year or what’s going on?
We can’t just keep having this permanent state of crisis at A&Es. It’s going in for my entire adult life. It’s nothing new and it’s not even a crisis – it’s permanent, normalised and the people seem to just put up with it because they’ve no choice. It’s sadly become an accepted normality.
It’s dangerous. It’s frightening and it’s also putting staff in an incredibly challenging working environment that’s causing them to just leave for better optons elsewhere.
What’s anyone actually doing about this? Or is this going to be another round of handwringing and lofty statements that mean nothing?
First world country, third world health system, we should be on the streets demanding the billions be spent on saving and improving lives. Compared to other European countries we’re tragic.
My MIL was very sick a couple of years back with back pain. She was screaming the house down, and we waited an hour on an ambulance.
When they arrived, she had just passed out with the pain. They said, “She’s asleep, we’ll come back.” She woke up 5mins after they left, and I had to call again. Another hour later, we got another ambulance. When we got to the hospital, they left her in a chair in the hallway for hours.
When she was finally seen, it was panic stations as sepsis was flagged. We were incredibly lucky, and she survived.
But the doctors actually said to us, “Had you left it any later, she would have died.”
8hrs she was sat in the hallway before anyone looked at her and that was the second doctor to see her, the whole time she was writhing in pain and not a considerate glance was sent her was until it was her turn.
I know it isn’t easy to be working in a hospital but I genuinely wonder why can’t the upper management or other high up’s after 20-30 years of this stuff collectively agree to reform.
Could we not copy other high performing countries like France or the UK and reform the system? Why is it so hard to push legislation when other countries are proven to do it.
At the end of the day innocent people die because of this. This family lost their daughter for something that should have never happened. I don’t think anyone deliberately goes into work trying to kill people.
What is it specifically about Ireland that makes it so hard? Someone told me maybe we have too many regional hospitals and it isn’t the most efficient. They are all protected because obviously no one wants their local hospital to shut down.
Perhaps we could be better served by replacing them with medical centers that aren’t officially hospitals or something like that.
If any people in the HSE or medical could offer opinions that isn’t just “upper management are to blame”. I feel the issue is deeper and more structural than that. I cannot be that simple?
Happened to me at Dublin last month. Was insanely sick with high fever and was taking otc pain and fever meds. My condition didn’t improve after 2 days so went to a GP who immediately sent me to emergency, got there and waited for 8 hours before a doctor saw me who just asked me to continue the OTC meds I was taking. She saw me for a total of 5 minutes and just dismissed me. I pushed to get antibiotics and she refused. After 2 more days of not getting better I called the Laya on call GP who then prescribed me antibiotics and then got better after 3 days. Ireland medical system greatly needs to improve in patient care.
[–]East_Key631 0 points 4 minutes ago
Yes but in a corporate manslaughter charge individuals are held accountable – they have to explain in a court of some kind before a judge why they did or did not do x y z. As the result of corporate manslaughter charges individuals can go to jail. You said it yourself in brackests they can go to jail if found to have committed a crime.
Now you tell me how will we ever know if they committed a crime if we cannot get them first to answer in a court . Answer some kind of corporate manslaughter charge for HSE. That is how. Its the same as RTE they are hiding behind the blanket defence of the size and opaque management of HSE
You are being crass because you comment said this happens all the time. No consideration for the victim. And it is a victim. People dont just say manslaughter because they are angry. It is manslaughter because they are negligent and they know what will happen as a result of their implementation or not of their policies.
Without even opening the piece, let me uuess the HSE’s response:
*”Lessons have been learnt / new structures and procedures put in place”*
>The report’s findings note the executive management team appeared to have “little understanding” of the risks to patient care caused by an overcrowded environment, in terms of the impact on assessing and managing patients and the nursing team’s ability to provide safe care.
What consequences will these managers face?
This is how my mom nearly died.. they even sent her home once before her meningitis has fully cleared.. within 24 hours she was delirious and non responsive again…
It’s been a long year but she’s finally getting back to being herself…. She is so lucky she didn’t have permanent brain damage. It could take a couple years for her to be fully normal again.
It’s absolutely shocking what happened to this lovely young woman. I’m so sad :(.
Ireland is a failed state. Policing, healthcare, housing… a complete disaster.
My mum survived bacterial meningitis by the skin of her teeth.
She was rapidly deteriorating right in front of me. I ran the corridor, screaming for someone to help.
She was put into an induced coma shortly after.
Reading this article brought me right back to that night. I’m so thankful for every day we’ve had together since.
As shocking and upsetting as it is to hear this, unfortunately I’m not one bit surprised.
About 5 years ago I went to A&E with a pain in my leg, I can only describe it as someone pouring boiling water down my veins when I was standing or sitting. I was there for 10 hours after being triaged in agonising pain getting worse the whole time while minor injuries were being seen ahead of me, I remember seeing a teenager with an ingrown toenail specifically, who arrived 2 hours after me and was seen long before me and a workman who cut him thumb and needed 2 stitches.
My mother finally came in after her third phone call to see if I had been seen yet and I was called in by the doctor half an hour later.
The doctor took one look at me and said it was a Charlie horse and to go home. My mother was a nurse and told him to look at the swelling and very visible size difference between legs and to do a d-dimer test. 2 hours later the rest came back at 16 times the upper limit and I had a DVT, a blood clot behind my knee. I was given one tramadol and one blood thinner and told come back in tomorrow for an ultrasound of the knee. By rights, I should have been kept in for observation in case the clot broke off.
If I had listened to the doctor and went home I’d be dead from a pulmonary embolism.
When my mother was dying of cancer she got up out of the bed in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and she had a bad fall. Banged her head on the ground. She lay there for 25 mins before the son of another patient came and found her and sounded the alarm. Understaffing is a serious problem in the Irish health system. Cant blame our qualified health workers for leaving.