HSE cuts ‘force nurses into mistakes’

Nurses are being forced into making mistakes because of HSE cuts, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has claimed.

INMO vice-president Geraldine Talty warned the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children that the HSE’s latest cutting plan had gone too far.

“This plan is going to cost money; it is going to cost lives; and its going to cost nurses their registrations because they are being forced into making mistakes,” she warned.

Ms Talty was one of a number of INMO representatives who attended yesterday’s committee meeting to discuss the HSE’s new implementation plan under the Haddington Road Agreement. She referred to the Stafford Hospital scandal in Britain in the late 2000s when poor care was found to have resulted in high mortality rates among patients.

Ms Talty said last year’s report on the Mid Staffordshire Trust which ran Stafford Hospital stated that good people could fail to meet the needs of patients when their working conditions did not provide them with conditions for success.

INMO president Claire Mahon said none of them wanted to have reports like the one from the Mid Staffordshire inquiry, fired at them in 10 or 15 years’ time and told that they did nothing. “That’s why we are here,” she said.

Last month, a war of words erupted between the HSE and the INMO over the terms of the Haddington Road Agreement.

The INMO said it was told by the health authority that it wanted to implement an extra €80m in savings in the health service, that is on top of €212m for this year.

Under the plan, the HSE wants to use health care assistants to fill vacancies instead of agency nurses.

It also wants to replace essential vacant posts with graduate nurses and interns with less experience. However, the HSE denies these are fresh cuts, saying they are already in the terms of the Agreement. INMO general secretary Liam Doran said they were due to meet the HSE’s director of quality and safety and the director of nursing/midwifery services on Monday.

He said a meeting had been arranged with the minister for health, Dr James Reilly, for July 21.

Mr Doran said he had asked to meet the committee urgently because the HSE continued to work to implement what he termed as “flawed” measures.

He added that the INMO wanted the HSE to agree to suspend the implementation of all current measures contained in its most recent plan that impact on frontline staff. Committee chairman Jerry Buttimer said they would ask the HSE to engage meaningfully with the INMO.