About Letterkenny University Hospital

Letterkenny University Hospital (LUH) is an acute general and maternity hospital delivering a patient-centred, quality-driven focused service and a wide range of diagnostic and support services. LUH is one of five hospitals in the SAOLTA Hospital Group West and is a teaching hospital with links to the National University of Ireland Galway, the Royal College of Surgeons and the Letterkenny Institute of Technology. Undergraduate Nurse, Midwifery, and AHP training and clinical placements are also provided at the hospital along with post graduate Medical and Nursing education.

Letterkenny University Hospital serves the population of most of County Donegal with a catchment area of over 140,000 people. The area is noted for its high levels of dependency with higher than the national average of medical card ownership, elderly people, levels of unemployment and general peripherality associated with poor transport networks to other regions.

In 2022, the hospital had over 22,000 in-patient attendances, 25,000 day case attendances, over 65,000 out-patient attendances and 40,000 attendances at its Emergency Department. There were over 1,600 babies born in LUH this year.

The hospital provides a broad range of general, medical, surgical, paediatric and maternity services. The hospital has strong links with tertiary referral centres in University College Hospital in Galway as well as the Beaumont, Mater, St. James’s, St Vincent’s and Tallaght University Hospitals in Dublin.

Over a period of many years, LUH has developed strong links on a cross border basis with hospitals in Northern Ireland, especially Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry. Altnagelvin Hospital provides Radiotherapy service, Oral Maxilo Facial and Dermatology services to the population of the north west, the latter two delivered on both Letterkenny & Derry (Altnagelvin Hospital) sites.

LUH is an approved regional centre for both cardiac and renal services. Under the National Cancer Control programme, LUH is an approved centre for Symptomatic Breast Cancer (linked to unit in UCHG), Colo-rectal cancer and the Bowel Screening programme. It operates a shared care service with tertiary centres in Dublin and Galway for all other cancers.

There are over 2,400 staff employed in LUH consisting of 750 nursing staff, 58 hospital consultants, 160 non-consultant hospital doctors, 240 clerical/administration staff, 280 professions allied to medicine (e.g. radiographers, physiotherapists, OTs, medical scientists, pharmacists) and 250 support staff (catering, cleaning/housekeeping, porters, security, maintenance, estates/engineering).