Resignations from the HSE were at least 1,000 higher than expected last year as the post-Covid exodus from the health service continued.
In a normal year about 9,500 HSE staff resign or retire, but 10,500 did so in the first nine months of 2022, according to national director of human resources Anne Marie Hoey.
The departure of so many staff, widely attributed to post-pandemic burnout and dissatisfaction with conditions in the health service, is rendering recruitment targets harder to achieve.
However, last year was still a record one for health service recruitment, with a net addition of more than 5,400 staff, Ms Hoey told HSE board members.
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“The health service is facing sustained and significant demand for qualified health and social care professionals within its services. This demand will remain, and become more significant due to a number of factors; social and environmental, health service developments, and challenges in recruitment and retention of staff,” assistant national director of recruitment reform and resourcing Eithne Fox told the HSE’s people and culture committee.
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said HSE staffing was expanding “very rapidly” after four record years of recruitment. “You have to work very hard just to expand capacity to meet the existing demographic pressures. On top of that, you have to go further, because we have a legacy backlog,” he told RTÉ Radio on Tuesday.
[ Hospital overcrowding is a symptom of the failure to reform the health serviceOpens in new window ]
The difficulties experienced by the HSE in recruiting and retaining qualified staff were illustrated in a separate discussion with board members about the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (Camhs), which has been at the centre of repeated controversies, many arising from staff shortages.
Three times more doctors were trained to work in the Camhs service last year compared to 2021 but “most” of those trained emigrated, national clinical adviser on mental health Dr Amir Niazi told board members.
About 600 patients nationally are waiting for more than 12 months for a Camhs appointment. Children in South Kerry with mental health issues are being treated via video by a doctors based in the United Arab Emirates because the Camhs position remains vacant.
Dr Niazi said the consultants holding video consultations were familiar with the Irish healthcare system, and do present in person once a month.
In some areas, he said, four efforts had been made to recruit consultants, without success.
[ The Irish Times view on the report on child mental health servicesOpens in new window ]
Meanwhile, the HSE board has said the overcrowding experienced by patients as demand surged after Christmas was “simply not acceptable in terms of the time waiting to be treated and the time waiting to be admitted to a bed in a hospital”.
“The board expressed regret that this has been the case and acknowledged how difficult it was for patients, staff and families,” according to newly-published minutes of a meeting last January.
The board recommended the need for new planning as well as the acceleration of a three-year plan to improve emergency care “to ensure the system is prepared to the greatest extent possible if similar situations arise in future years”.
