‘Chaotic situation’ at Penafiel emergency department may have contributed to elderly woman’s death

In the emergency department of the Padre America hospital in Penafiel, Porto district, there is a “chaotic situation” with dozens of patients this Wednesday, and this situation may have contributed to the death of an elderly woman on Tuesday, a source from the Order of Nurses said.

“The situation is chaotic because at the peak of the influenza pandemic the hospital has no capacity,” Miguel Vasconcelos, president of the Northern Regional Council of the Order of Nurses, told Lusa.

The ER hallways, he added, are filled with firefighters’ stretchers carrying patients because there is no room for the number of emergencies that arrive at the hospital.

Miguel Vasconcelos confirmed that an elderly woman wearing an orange bracelet, who had been waiting on a fire stretcher for about an hour to be seen by the hospital’s clinical team, died around 8pm on Tuesday.

Padre America Hospital has activated its contingency plan, bolstering its medical teams, but the biggest challenge at the moment, he stressed, is the facility’s lack of physical capacity to care for and admit patients.

It’s a chronic situation because it’s too small for the region it serves (about half a million people), but it gets worse when peaks like these hit, he said.

He also said that over the past few hours, about a dozen ambulances remained on duty at the hospital, which was confirmed by the commanders of several fire crews in the region.

“The teams don’t have the opportunity and the professionals end up getting tired,” lamented Miguel Vasconcelos.

This Wednesday, Lusa asked the General Health Inspectorate about the possible initiation of an investigation into this case of the woman’s death and is awaiting an answer.

According to SNS portals consulted by Lusa, at 10:50 a.m., the wait time at Padre America Hospital for patients classified as very urgent (orange bracelet) was 50 minutes, with two patients waiting at that time.

There were also eight emergency patients (yellow wristband) with an average wait time of 52 minutes.