Nurses warn: feel our wrath if pay rise held
Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) deputy secretary general Dave Hughes said that employers would “feel the full wrath of nurses” and did not rule out taking industrial action.
His comments were met with thunderous applause and a standing ovation by delegates at the union’s annual conference in Killarney, who voted unanimously to initiate “whatever action is necessary” to ensure all pay increases are paid on time.
The Health Service Executive (HSE) threatened to block the pay increase earlier this week as they claim the nurses have breached the Sustaining Progress agreement by not supporting a training programme aimed at expanding the role of healthcare assistants.
Planned changes in the role of healthcare assistants were the main bone of contention at the conference, with nurses saying the assistants’ role and responsibilities must be clarified in the interest of patient safety before they would agree to the final part of the training programme.
Delegates questioned who the assistants would be accountable to and questioned whether they were capable of some of the suggested extensions of their role.
One delegate questioned whether assistants, with just six months’ training, had the experience and judgment required to take temperatures of seriously ill children and interpret the results.
“I just want to know how nursing standards can be matched by the assistants when they are not governed by a regulatory body. This issue deserves to be debated at conference as our business is based on skill and expertise,” said INO executive council member Marie Gilligan.
Others questioned whether standards of care would be compromised if the healthcare assistants were given duties that require more expertise than they possess. “People have spoken about the healthcare assistants taking temperatures and checking pulses. However, interpretation of such results and information is a judgement based on knowledge and skills that are only the remit of the nurses,” said INO director of professional development Annette Kennedy. “The exact chain of command has not been decided.
“Healthcare assistants ought to be under the delegation of the nurse of midwife as they we have professional skills and they have technical skill. We need to decide legally who does what duties and under what conditions and only then will we agree to the last part of the assistants training module.”
A national survey of nurses and assistants completed by the Smurfit School of Business at University College Dublin revealed that most nurses support the expansion of the assistants’ role.
However, the nurses and midwives said that assistants needed more training, should only look after low-dependency patients and should support nurses and not replace them.
