The lack of proper funding for translators to assist health care workers communicate with foreign nationals in both hospital and community settings across the State came in for stiff criticism at the annual conference of the Irish Nurses' Organisation in Killarney yesterday.
Mayo nurse Patricia Barrett O'Boyle told the conference that on one occasion she visited a Chinese family in the community who had absolutely no English and she had no Chinese. "We only had a calculator between us," she said.
Another nurse said non-English speakers were spending longer in A&E because of difficulties communicating with them. "It can lead to disjointed care while translators are sought and they may fail to understand their instructions on discharge," she said.
Annette O'Higgins, a Dublin-based nurse, cited how problems with communication could have a terrible impact on patient outcomes. She said a 48-year-old Polish man who underwent an angiogram was told on leaving her hospital that he should rest for a few days. However he took a bus home across Europe and died of a heart attack before he got to the other end, she said.
Mary Forde, a member of the INO executive council, said a lot of the A&E budget was going on interpreters and translating leaflets for patients and the Government wasn't taking this into account.
The conference also heard that overcrowding was still an issue in a number of A&E units. Paddy Gallagher, a Dublin-based nurse, said he was ashamed and appalled at the conditions for some patients in A&E.
INO general secretary Liam Doran urged nurses not to allow themselves become complicit in manoeuvres by management to hide or downplay the A&E problem.
A number of overseas nurses also highlighted the cost of their visas and the fact that they have to renew them at regular intervals. Vergel Pascual, a nurse from the Philippines who works in Dublin, said Canada was now offering nurses travelling from overseas immigrant status on arrival as well as housing subsidies and interest free car loans.
"They just took hundreds of Filipino nurses from here . . . I lost a lot of good friends. I miss them," he said.
He added that if Ireland didn't begin to offer similar conditions it would lose more of its foreign nurses, after having gone to great expense to recruit them.
A number of nurses criticised the lack of spending on improving infrastructure to help curtail hospital-acquired infections. One nurse from the northeast said there were no changing rooms or showers for staff in his hospital yet the HSE returned millions from its capital budget last year to the exchequer, having been unable to spend it on time.