Psychiatric nurses may strike over compensation scheme

PSYCHIATRIC nurses are today likely to be offered a compensation scheme by the Department of Health, which will provide monetary awards if a nurse is physically injured by a patient.

However, the scheme will not cover psychological damage.

Such a package would fall short of the recommendations made in 2003 by a Department of Health task force which was set up to examine the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) claims that 859 nurses had been assaulted in one year alone.

Psychiatric nurses have threatened immediate industrial action unless both psychological and physical injury are covered by the no fault compensation scheme, as recommended by the 2003 report.

Research published by the PNA earlier this year showed attacks on psychiatric nurses had increased by 50% between 2001 and 2005.

When setting up the task force, then Minister for Health Micheál Martin had said he would “implement the recommendations of the task force within an agreed time-frame” but three years later, in July 2005, the Government informed the union that it had changed its mind.

Representatives from the PNA were due to meet Department of Health officials at a Labour Relations Commission (LRC) conciliation conference in Dublin this morning to discuss the compensation package and will then put the offer to a ballot of members. Rejection of the offer will result in immediate industrial action by the 6,000 PNA members, a spokesman said yesterday.

PNA general secretary Des Kavanagh said: “As far as we are concerned, the Government, our employers, are in breach of the Sustaining Progress agreement by backing down on the prior agreement.

“Our members have demanded a ballot for industrial action. Once the employers give us their proposals at the LRC, we will give all the available information to our members before they ballot.”