Over €500k being spent on overtime to run Kerry mental health services
THE shortage of psychiatric nurses is now at crisis point according to Cormac Williams, Branch Officer of the Kerry Psychiatric Nurses Association, who has written to Kerry Oireachtas members to help ensure mental health nurse graduates find employment in Kerry.
According to Mr Williams, all of the 2017 general nurse graduates have been offered full-time permanent employment in Kerry hospitals, while mental health nurse graduates are still awaiting employment offers from the HSE in Kerry.
He said the HSE spends approximately €550,000 per annum in overtime to run Kerry’s mental health service which, when combined with its policy of re-employing retired psychiatric nurses, is costing a third more than what it takes to employ graduates directly with the HSE.
“The number of retirements in Kerry is very high and these nurses have not been replaced. We have to ask why general nurse graduates have been employed and not psychiatric nurses. This logic of patching our mental health services in Kerry together with excessive overtime and retirees makes no sense. It’s bizarre and totally unacceptable. It’s getting serious now and we feel the mental health service is being left on the bottom again,” said Mr Williams
A statement from the Kerry Psychiatric Nurses’ Association also stressed that staffing levels within Kerry’s mental health service is now in a precarious state and that in six years the number of psychiatric nurses in Kerry has decreased from 280 to 180 nurses.
“This is a huge drop in six years and nurses called into run the service on an overtime basis is not conducive to maintaining a proper service. Efforts to expand and enact a functioning community mental health service in line with ‘A Vision for Change’ will come to nothing in Kerry unless more nurses are employed.”
Mr Williams added. “In the absence of employment in Kerry these 2017 mental health nurse graduates are facing immigration or the high rents and housing crisis of Dublin. This is clearly a shocking and unacceptable situation when these graduates are needed so badly at home in Kerry.”
The HSE were contacted to comment but had not replied by time of press.