AFTER an open letter was published in a daily newspaper today in which a nurse pleads with the Health Service Executive to be paid fairly for her work, Sinn Féin spokesperson on Health Louise O’Reilly TD said that it’s no surprise that almost 9 out of 10 trainee nurses plan to leave when they qualified.

Deputy O’Reilly (pictured) cited an NUI Galway survey where career opportunities, working conditions and lifestyle were cited as the top three factors by 88% of over 2,000 students surveyed.

The former health service trade union representative told reporters at the Dáil:

“Only last week, revelations in respect of the HSE recruitment campaign highlighted the famine of nurses coming to work in the Irish health system. This is indicative of a health system in crisis which, without a plan for a meaningful reform, will continue to haemorrhage staff and will fail to attract the talent that the services and the patients need.

“We are experiencing unprecedented difficulties in encouraging nurses and other health workers to work in our public health service.

“What we are now seeing – and which Sinn Féin has been saying for a long time – is that the greatest barrier to retaining and recruiting nurses in our public health system is the resulting toxic work environment.

“Nurses need to be able to trust that their work environment will get better and stay better. Any ad-hoc, half-hearted recruitment efforts simply will not cut it.

“The government need to address the root causes of their failure to recruit and this lies in the workplace.

“Our healthcare workers are the envy of the world and they deserve a decent place to work in.”

◼︎ SINN FÉIN Dublin City Councillor Noeleen Reilly, a member of the Regional Health Forum for Dublin and the North-East, has again voiced her concern at the continued staff shortages in both Beaumont and the Mater Hospital and the level of turnover, particularly in the area of nursing.

Speaking after the recent Health Forum meeting where she questioned hospital management on the staff shortages, Ballymun Councillor Reilly (pictured above at a hospital services protest in June) said:

“Beaumont is currently operating with a shortage of 203 staff members, with the Mater 103 members down. When I asked this question two months ago, I was told Beaumont had staff shortages of 151.

“Beaumont is the state’s largest hospital and North Dublin has the highest rate of people over the age of 65 in the state. These staff shortages are now becoming the norm in Beaumont and the Mater, not the exception, and that is not good enough.

“Any effort to retain existing and recruit further nursing staff will only succeed if a believable financial commitment is made by Government to expand health workforce numbers to the level needed to radically reshape the working environment in our health system.

“There cannot be a recruitment pause when the ability of hospitals to provide a decent level of health care is being undermined by staff shortages.”