Nursing vacancies: Beds will have to be closed in hospitals across the State later this year as a result of nursing shortages, it was predicted yesterday, as latest figures reveal there are 765 nursing posts vacant.
The vacancies that now exist are being covered by expensive agency nurses and overtime work by full-time nurses but, with no new nurses qualifying in the Republic this year, there will be another 1,500 fewer nurses than normal in the autumn.
Liam Doran, general secretary of the Irish Nurses Organisation, said the health services would be in crisis. "It will lead to bed closures like we had two years ago. Services can't be maintained because we won't have enough staff," he said.
He added that health service administrators had known for four years that there would be no new nurses qualifying this year, due to a change over from a diploma to a nursing degree programme, but nothing was done to prepare for the consequences.
The latest National Survey on Nursing Resources states there were 765 nursing posts vacant at the end of December, just 29 fewer than at the end of last September, despite 683 nurses being recruited from abroad last year.
Mr Doran said this suggested Irish-trained nurses were not being retained. He said only one in four Irish nursing graduates in 2004 were offered full-time employment. "Our view is the red carpet should have been rolled out for them. No special initiatives were introduced whatsoever to retain them in the system despite the fact that everybody knew there would be no graduates this year," he said.
"Nursing vacancies have remained between 750 and 1,000 for the last three to four years despite the fact that this country has spent a solid fortune on worldwide recruitment and on agency nurses," he added.
The latest report on nursing resources from the Health Service Employers Agency states that 458 agency nurses work every day in the hospitals. They cost employers significantly more than staff nurses. And it says an average of 4,875 hours nurse overtime were used every day for the month of December to make up for the staff deficit. "The December 2004 volume of overtime equates with employment of 875 full-time nurses," it says.
The survey was conducted during January and February. "Employers reported that a total of 3,949 staff nurses were recruited in the year ending December 31st, 2004 and that a total of 3,131 staff nurses resigned/retired/moved to another employer in the same 12- month period. This reflects a movement of nurses within the system," it said.
The HSE said the fact that no nurses would graduate this year was being taken "extremely seriously". It said a national steering group had been set up to look at recruiting and retaining nurses.
Mr Doran said it was too little too late. He said there were no surplus nurses in Ireland so those working abroad had to be attracted back but this would be difficult as pay and conditions here didn't compete with countries like the US and Australia.