Lunchtime protest by workers at Tullamore Hospital

Workers at Tullamore Hospital staged a lunchtime protest today against what they say are inadequate staffing levels.

The protest was prompted by recruitment caps in the HSE's Pay and Numbers Strategy and workers told the Tullamore Tribune staff numbers have fallen so far that they are concerned about patient safety.

Colm Plunkett, senior staff nurse in oncology and haematology at Midlands Regional Hospital, Tullamore said he had been working there for 23 years.

“At present things have never been as serious with regard to the health and safety of the patients and of the staff. The problem is cut, cut, cut, tick boxes and save money at the expense of people's health,” said Mr Plunkett (pictured on the left below), a member of the INMO (Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation).

“And when I say at the expense of people's health I'm talking about the safety of the patients and my ability to practise safety and to give safe and efficient care to my patients.

“Also because of the stress, physically and mentally that it puts on people, our own health is at stress.

“The HSE is more about process than actually providing healthcare. They were hiring for a panel for nursing last week or the week before, it's for a panel, 150 people. They won't recruit people from the panel.”

SIPTU member Toni Cunningham, a senior phlebotomist at Tullamore Hospital who has been on the staff for over 25 years said: “The main objective for us here is to maintain safer staffing levels for our patients. We have a huge facility here, huge staff here, but just not enough.”

Ms Cunningham said wait times were unreasonable and said “surge” wards were being used, whereby spaces not traditionally for patient accommodation, were now being utilised to increase capacity.

“This is to highlight that we do want safer staffing levels and we are willing to escalate this action until it's achieve everywhere, not just in Tullamore.”

The protest was jointly mounted by the INMO, SIPTU and another union, Forsa.

“We all have the same goal, we all want safe staffing levels. We want prompt services for our patients. We want people who require lifesaving treatment or diagnostic testing, for it to be done rapidly, people not to be hanging around. We're here for the benefit of our health service, for the benefit of our patients. We don't care about money and pay and numbers and strategy, we care about people.”

INMO chief Phil Ní Sheaghdha said there were currently 54 nursing vacancies in Tullamore Hospital.

“Fundamentally what nurses, midwives and all other healthcare workers are saying is we are not happy that this is good enough patients. We want the patients to know we stand with them and we want the patients to stand with us and say, what's needed here is more staff,” said Ms Ní Sheaghdha.

She said the employment caps had been introduced in an arbitrary manner: “The Government have invested a lot of money in determining what levels of staffing, particularly in nursing and midwifery, are required.”

She added: “We know that for every four patients there should be one nurse. That's the safe measurement, but regularly because of the cap and because of the restrictions on recruitment one nurse is dealing with 12 patients and on some occasions, particularly in the out of hours period or at night, that can be moved to one to 20 and that's grossly unsafe.

“In this hospital there are 54 vacancies at the moment and that tells us that ratio is going to be wrong every day. What we're saying is you can't impose a cap saying we're over budget in the Hse when the consequence of that cap is that when patients come into hospital are not going to be provided with the safe level of staffing they deserve.”

The Tullamore protest is one of a number taking place around the country. “We're happy to meet the employers but our members are saying to us very clearly they are not going to go through another winter where the staffing numbers are going to get increasingly worse. The numbers who are attending public hospitals has increased, the population has increased by over a million people in a short space of years.”

INMO regional official Bernie Stenson said the 54 vacancies in Tullamore are across ICU (intensive care) and the wards but at the same time, there are plans for an expansion of services.

“The hospital is for ever expanding. It's expanding its ICU, they need staff to do that. Staff need to be trained up,” said Ms Stenson.