Nursing homes facing ‘crisis’ due to staff shortage

The nursing shortage crippling healthcare delivery in hospitals will extend to nursing homes unless the Government urgently engages in workforce planning, Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI) has warned.

The nursing home sector is the latest to join in the clamour for major and immediate recruitment of nurses.

Earlier this week, Junior Health Minister Kathleen Lynch called on nurses who have emigrated to return to fill the 1,000 plus vacancies expected with mass retirements next June. She is also urging nurses due to retire to remain on in an effort to limit the fallout. Ms Lynch said she has raised the matter with Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Health Minister Leo Varadkar.

However, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said the minister is underestimating the scale of the crisis and it called for a major sustained recruitment campaign. It also wants the abolition of the “flawed yellow-pack” graduate programme. The scheme, launched in January 2013 with the aim of recruiting 1,000 graduates, has been a failure, said INMO general secretary Liam Doran. He said there are “less than 100” nurses operating under the scheme where they are paid 85% of the salary earned by their pre-yellow-pack peers in their first year, rising to 90% in the second year.

Mr Doran also said many voluntary hospitals — including the Mater and St Vincent’s in Dublin — have abandoned the scheme in an effort to attract and retain nurses while the HSE is now offering full-salary, three-month contracts.

The INMO said the Government’s recruitment embargo had resulted in the loss of more than 5,000 nursing and midwifery posts in the past five years. The union said it had consistently pointed out “the complete absence of manpower planning”.

Meanwhile, Tadhg Daly, NHI chief, said a report published two years ago by the All Ireland Gerontological Nurses Association (AIGNA) in conjunction with NHI “warned the specific skills of nurses to provide clinical care to older population have never been so much in demand”.

“NHI reiterates our warning that the rapid increase in ageing population will lead to similarly rapid growth in requirement for gerontological nursing care,” Mr Daly said.

He said there was an “urgent and imperative requirement for engagement with stakeholders to deliver a workforce plan”.

“Failure to do so will result in serious crisis in healthcare, with our health services not capable of meeting our older population’s clinical care requirements,” Mr Daly said.

He repeated NHI’s call for the establishment of a Department of Health-led Forum on Long-Term Residential Care.