Many nursing posts in cancer, palliative, paediatric, and rehab care are being left vacant and nurses are being asked to work on their days off due to recruitment restrictions, their trade union has maintained.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said its members would begin balloting for industrial action on Monday over what it described as a “de facto recruitment ban” in the HSE.
In July HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster said a new employment ceiling would be set at 125,420 whole-time equivalent positions – the number of occupied paid posts in place at the end of December last year.
In addition, the HSE has provision for about 2,300 posts to staff new developments this year and for about 1,000 employees in hospices who are being brought into the public system.
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Trade unions contended, however, that the new HSE pay and numbers strategy would mean the abolition of 2,000 funded posts that were vacant at the end of December last year.
Tánaiste Micheál Martin told the Dáil last week that there were 28,000 more people working in the health service than there were at the beginning of 2020, including 9,375 additional nurses and midwives.
He said that the argument being put forward that the recruitment ceiling represented a freeze by another name “could not be further from the truth”.
“The health service has been funded to expand its numbers, both this year and next year. Funding has been allocated to enable that to happen”, he said.
The INMO said examples of short staffing and very high-risk situations, which were now arising due to the employment restrictions, had been set out by its representatives from across the country at a meeting on Saturday.
The union said large gaps in the nursing and midwifery workforce were affecting the ability of its members to provide safe care.
It said many nursing posts in cancer, palliative, paediatric, and rehab care were being left vacant. It said this, in turn, was leading to increasing demands from HSE management on staff to work on days off, stay on for significant unpaid periods after a rostered shift ends and deal with increasing levels of frustration from the public who are waiting longer for services.
INMO president Caroline Gourley said on Sunday:
“INMO members have provided us with example after example of posts not being filled when a colleague leaves or retires and posts that are deemed essential under the emergency department agreement not being filled. While there is a framework for safe nurse staffing and skill mix, many of the posts measured as necessary to provide safe care under this are not being filled.
“A large number of temporary vacancies are being left vacant due to leave, particularly maternity leave [and] this is leading to extremely high-risk situations for patients and working conditions which compromise the health and safety of the rostered nurses and midwives. ”
“The expectation of the HSE is that nurses and midwives will work beyond their shift end time, volunteer for additional shifts on days off and that this ‘good will’ is expected to continue over this winter. INMO representatives have now made it very clear that that will not be the case.”
She said the union was now seeing instances where it was taking up to 12 months to recruit nurses and midwives into vacant posts.
Mr Martin said that HR management in the HSE “needs to be looked at”.
“A concern I have is that work has been delegated to regional executives in terms of the prioritisation of resources but that could lead to a post-code-lottery type of situation, which is something we must avoid.”
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