Nurses tell of anger at shortage of staff

NURSES at two Co. Tipperary care facilities are balloting for industrial action over what they claim is the ‘inability to provide acceptable standards of care’ due to staff shortages.

It comes as nurses at the Midlands Regional Hospital Mullingar say they are concerned over ‘chronic’ staff shortages that they say led to shifts left uncovered and others being outsourced to agencies.

Members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation at St Patrick’s Hospital, Cashel, and St Anthony’s Unit, Clonmel, say they cannot care for their elderly patients due to a lack of staff.

INMO officials said they had met nurses who are ‘visibly distressed’ over conditions at St Patrick’s and who ‘have pleaded for additional nurses to enable proper care’.

Management say requests for additional nurses were denied. The INMO said there is an ‘absolute refusal by higher level officials in the HSE to listen to and act on the advocacy of nurses’. INMO industrial relations manager Mary Fogarty said the situation was ‘deeply disturbing’.

She said: ‘We are of the view that the HSE are non-compliant in their duty of care to all affected by placing the residents/patients at risk and causing unnecessary workplace stresses for our members.’

A HSE spokesman said the Tipperary hospitals have ‘an excellent reputation’ and meet ‘the Health Information and Quality Authority’s requirements’ under the Safer Better Healthcare standards.