Nurses working unpaid hours as shortages bite

SEVERAL hospitals around the country are only able to maintain services due to nurses working unpaid hours to cover for increasing staff shortages.

Pressures are particularly acute in the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick with wards closing due to a lack of trained staff.

A staff member at the Mid-Western said the situation had seriously deteriorated since September.

“The moratorium on recruitment has really begun to hit with maternity and sick leave no longer being covered — with extra hours and overtime also ended.”

She added: “Things have gotten really, really bad recently with student nurses not being kept on in September after completing their year-long internship. This has left us with a huge, huge shortage of nurses with some theatres and wards being closed and increasing demands on staff.”

The closure of two wards has created a backlog at the emergency department with patients being catered for in a “transit lounge” where people are on trolleys for up to three days.

Shortages are also resulting in staff being asked to work extra hours in the hope they will then be compensated with extra time off sometime in the future.

Nurses at other hospitals, including the Mater and Beaumont Hospitals in Dublin, have also reported increasing pressure for them to work unpaid hours as staff shortages bite.

Staff are generally very reluctant to talk about the practice as it is frowned upon by their unions.

An embargo on all but “exceptional” overtime payments has been introduced at the Mid-Western but a HSE spokeswoman strongly denied that staff now felt forced to maintain patient care on their own time.

She said: “The status is that there is no overtime or agency payments available except in very exceptional circumstances, e.g. specialist areas such as maternity.”

But she added: “There are no cases where nurses are working extra hours without being paid.”

The practice of working unpaid overtime is strongly opposed by staff representative organisations, but SIPTU nurses organiser Louise O’Reilly said it was unfortunately a feature of Irish hospitals.