Madam, - Because nurses are burdened with a collective conscience which does not allow them to put people's health at risk, their reasons for taking action are being virtually ignored by the media and many reports refer almost entirely to the inconveniences resulting from the work to rule.
Does nobody care that in a state supposedly "awash with money" a nurse who has trained for three years, without pay, starts work as a qualified medical professional on a salary of €28,878? Why did nurses receive 8 per cent increases when occupational therapists, physiotherapists and others received 12 per cent? Why did the benchmarking process refuse to deal at all with the issue of the 35-hour week, which already applies to all other health professionals? What on earth justifies the situation where unqualified carers - and indeed some cleaning staff - are paid more than nurses who have undergone a long and rigorous training and on whose actions and decisions lives often depend? Is it any wonder nurses are unable to trust in the benchmarking process when this is the situation resulting from its 2002 report?
The present situation is indeed disgraceful - and the disgrace lies firmly at the door of Mary Harney and the present Government for refusing to deal with the anomalies which leave nurses and midwives in a state of completely justifiable discontent. Patients depend for their very lives on nurses; we should insist that they are treated with respect. With an election looming the Government might do well to consider how many voters are aware of how much they owe the nurses who have cared for them or their loved ones. - Yours, etc,
ANNE McELHERON, Rostellan Mews, Greystones, Co Wicklow.
Madam, - I am a staff nurse working in a busy critical care unit in the west of Ireland. I have been working in the intensive care area since 1981. I have a degree in nursing for which I get paid nothing extra, though I was essentially forced to go back to college to get the degree. I am a qualified midwife, for which I get no extra pay, even though my skills as a midwife are used when we have obstetrical emergencies. I have a higher diploma in intensive care and for that I get a small allowance.
My base salary is €34,800 a year, before taking account of mandatory night-duty, obliging nurses to work at night for two weeks in every five, for which I get paid at a rate of time-and-a-quarter. The HSE is quoting €56,000 a year as the average nursing salary. I have never earned anything approaching that figure, despite my qualifications, experience, length of service (26 years) and the stressful nature of my work.
Our critical care beds are full 365 days of the year. Nurses work a 40-hour week, covering the hospital 24/7, in very challenging conditions. They are answerable to everyone - patients, of course, but also doctors, consultants, hospital administrators and the visiting public. They care and they counsel, and all for less pay than a young schoolteacher makes for working just 22½ hours, and without the long school holidays.
Mary Harney, Bertie Ahern and the HSE are deliberately misleading the public by maligning nurses and misrepresenting our just case for better pay and conditions in line with most public servants. We deal with MRSA, VRE and many other more dangerous and contagious diseases every day, yet we do not get danger money, as prison officers and gardaí do. We cannot even take a lunch or dinner break away from our units because of the risk of spreading infection.
I love my job. I care deeply for my patients, as do my colleagues. However, our patience has run out. Benchmarking has failed nurses. Recently-published statistics indicate that 50 per cent of student nurses will leave the profession once they qualify. Is it really any wonder? - Yours, etc,
MARY KELLEHER, Staff Nurse, University College Hospital Galway, Salthill, Galway.