Nurses who train to work with sick children are "penalised" by up to £7,000 a year in some cases, the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) said yesterday.
The INO was commenting on the shortage of intensive care and theatre nurses at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin.
The shortage has contributed to the cancellation of operations on two-year-old Dillon Smyth from Tallaght, Dublin, and has led to delayed admissions in other cases. The child, who has had three cancellations so far, is due to be operated on today.
The Fine Gael spokesman on health, Mr Gay Mitchell, has described the shortage of specialist nurses at the hospital as another symptom of the Government's "sticking plaster" approach to the health services.
The criticism was echoed by the Labour party spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz McManus, who said urgent reform to tackle the staffing crisis in acute hospital services was being delayed because of the Government's incompetence in tackling longstanding structural problems. "As far back as last year there was clear evidence that serious nursing shortages were building up," said Ms McManus. She said the case of Dillon Smyth was not unique.
Training as a children's nurse involves an 18-month postgraduate course during which the nurse reverts to a salary of £13,520, Ms Phil O'Shea, industrial relations officer with the INO, said yesterday.
For a general nurse at the midpoint on the scale and receiving a long-service increment, this represents a drop of nearly £7,000 a year during the training period, she said. Nurses must also pay more than £1,200 in university fees and those who are usually based outside Dublin must pay for expensive accommodation in the capital, she said.
The Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, recently announced that nurses training as midwives or as Public Health Nurses would keep their general nursing salary during training and would have their fees refunded. Ms O'Shea said a similar concession should be made to nurses training to work with children.
Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children has 23 vacant posts for nurses specialising in intensive care. Ms O'Shea said only 12 nurses a year are trained in ICU work. This number should be doubled immediately and training places should be created at hospitals in Cork, Galway and Limerick. Currently, all ICU training is done at Our Lady's. The Department of Health and Children said last night that it has been in talks with the INO on its concerns over the training of nurses for sick children and would be responding to those concerns within weeks.
Mr Mitchell said that in its fourth year in office the Government continued to preside over a health system in chaos, with staff shortages and waiting lists beyond what would be acceptable in Eastern Europe.
There were almost 35,000 patients on waiting lists, with thousands more waiting for asses sment of their illnesses before they could even get on a list. "Disabled people face a backlog of three years when applying for help in making their homes more suitable to their needs, and children in need of orthodontic treatment face a three-year waiting list."
He called for a complete overhaul of the health services. "The Government's sticking-plaster treatment is a futile and superficial effort to stem a potentially fatal haemorrhage from the Irish health system," he said. Ms McManus said transferring patients abroad for procedures can help augment treatment here, but it was now being used to replace treatment in Ireland. The staff shortages extended to doctors as well as nurses, she said, adding that the Labour Party estimated that up to 1,000 new hospital consultants were needed.
pomorain@irish-times.ie