Jobs embargo ‘threatens mental health services’

AS the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum prepares to close to new admissions from June 15, it has emerged mental health services across the country are in serious difficulty due to the staffing embargo.

CMH’s decision is due to the failure of the HSE to sanction the filling of 25 nursing vacancies. It means there will be no place for dozens of dangerous or suicidal patients, including prison inmates, from next week.

However, according to Des Kavanagh, general secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA), the shortfall is replicated nationwide.

He points to difficulties in Cavan/Monaghan, Galway and Dublin as examples.

“Cavan/Monaghan has developed a hugely comunitised service. It is one of the examples given to the rest of the country about how the service ought to be developed and was given an award by the HSE two years ago in recognition of their achievement in developing community services,” he said. “However, the teams in the community are being decimated because of the non-replacement of staff who have retired, left the service or are on long-term sick leave. That means some teams are operating on half the staff they are required to have.

“Furthermore, their ability to travel has been reduced by the 18% cut in mileage allowance. This is not people going to meetings. It is nurses going out to homes of people in crisis. In places like Cavan and Monaghan they are stopping high levels of people having to be put into hospital because they are going to the family and providing hospital treatment in the home. If a patient is in rural county Monaghan and the nurses have not got miles left in the month because they have exceeded their quota, they have to travel at their own cost or not travel at all.”

He said for west Galway the services are run from an acute unit in University Hospital in the city.

“The total number of nursing posts there is 106. They are currently working on 93. In mental health treatment where someone is felt to be very suicidal, or felt to be a danger to others and are ‘specialed’ — an extra nurse is called on duty to provide one-to-one care. In Galway, because of the embargo they cannot call staff in. Core staff are therefore having to provide one-to-one care and there is no one left to run the rest of the service.”

Mr Kavanagh said the PNA had told the HSE there is a very real danger that if staff are not put in place quickly nurses will have no choice but to report for duty, but not go on duty because of the safety issues.

“There was a total of 43 patients in the male and female units on Thursday. A number of the patients were on ‘specials’. At parts of the day on Thursday there was one nurse responsible for nearly 20 female patients. These are people who are acutely mentally ill.”

In St Loman’s in Dublin there are almost 40 vacancies. It covers the acute hospital in Tallaght and all the acute services in west Dublin. “We are down 24% of the total nursing staff there,” he said.