When Louise Hassan was taken by ambulance to Connolly Hospital in Dublin with suspected fractured vertebrae in November, there were four people on trolleys ahead of her in the emergency department.
Even then the hospital was coming under intense pressure to treat new patients. The nurse asked the ambulance driver if she could sit on a chair as there were no beds. The driver said no.
Ms Hassan has osteoporosis, a medical condition that makes bones more brittle, and the pain she was experiencing was too severe for her to sit on a chair.
“When the nurse asked if I was okay to sit on a chair, I knew it must be bad,” said Ms Hassan.
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The 54-year-old from Dublin 15 began experiencing “horrendous” pain after a sneeze. Osteoporosis means that even a violent sneeze can seriously injure people with the condition.
At the hospital, she was put in a cubicle with no curtain and no privacy for her or others around her. A young girl opposite her was vomiting continuously into a bowl.
“That was not right that I was seeing her and she was seeing me,” she said.
After her back was X-rayed, she was seen by a young doctor who told her that nothing appeared wrong from the scans. Ms Hassan said that a consultant gave her just 30 seconds of his time and said she could go home. She was given a prescription for painkillers and discharged after spending five hours at the hospital.
The pain persisted. A month later, she received a phone call from the Blanchardstown hospital saying that they missed the fact that she had fractured three vertebrae in her lower back.
Looking back, an angry Ms Hassan believes hospital staff were just too busy and could not spend enough time to diagnose her injuries properly. She believes that for a potential fractured spine the hospital should have given her an MRI scan when she was first admitted to the hospital.
“The reason I am so upset is because they were so busy that they missed it. They didn’t have time to do their job properly. They don’t have time to sit and talk to you properly,” she said.
“I just think they could be making catastrophic mistakes because they are so busy. I could have been paralysed.”
She is now wearing a back brace while she awaits a follow-up scan later this week, having transferred her care to the Mater hospital in Dublin. She will avoid emergency departments given the current overcrowding in hospitals and pressure on the health system.
“This is the worst I have ever seen. I have never seen it like this where you are scared of going to A&E. I just wouldn’t. I would have to be dying before I would go,” she said.
Hours after The Irish Times submitted queries to Connolly Hospital, Ms Hassan received a response to a complaint she submitted to patient services at the hospital in December.
The hospital told her that they would have a response to her complaint by January 26th. “I’m sorry to hear about your experience with Connolly Hospital,” its email stated.
The hospital has yet to respond to a request for comment from The Irish Times.
