Surgery cancelled due to industrial action by theatre nurses

A NUMBER of patients in the Mid-Western Health Board (MWHB) have had surgery cancelled because of industrial action by theatre nurses.

Two day cases and two theatre operations were cancelled at Nenagh General Hospital yesterday, one of three hospitals hit by a work-to-rule, in a dispute over on-call pay.

Irish Nurses’ Organisation (INO) representative Helen Rouine said further cancellations were likely as the industrial action drags on.

“Nurses are no longer doing overtime, or clerical, administrative or portering duties in the theatres, so it will have a cumulative effect. Theatres will not run as efficiently and it will slow procedures up to the stage where more elective surgery will be cancelled.”

A spokesman for the MWHB said no operations at either Ennis General or Limerick Regional, the other two hospitals involved in the dispute, had yet been cancelled, but that the situation was under constant review.

The dispute, in its second week, centres on a demand by 70 theatre nurses for improved on-call rates. Nurses earn €17.81 for being on-call for 15 hours in Ennis and Nenagh. Theatre nurses at Limerick Regional are on eight-and-a-half-hour standby while on-call. The INO wants on-call pay increased to €76.

INO representative in the MWHB, Helen Rouine, said the rate effectively meant on-call nurses were earning just over €1 per hour.

She said talks with the MWHB had come to nothing and they were seeking the intervention of the Labour Relation Commission (LRC). The MWHB spokesman said the offer of a joint referral to the LRC has already been made to the INO and that offer still stood, but the INO had not accepted. The MWHB has requested the Health Service Employers Agency to refer the dispute to the LRC.

The INO is seeking an increase in the overnight staffing complement of eight nurses in a 110-bed hospital.

INO representative Michael Dineen said they had suggested a number of initiatives to the SHB in an effort to boost numbers, but that the SHB remained intractable.

A statement from the SHB said it had offered to increase the hospital’s nursing staff in a bid to resolve the dispute.

However Mr Dineen said the offer was unacceptable because of delayed implementation.