'People are calling in sick because they are stressed' - nurses speak of 'shocking' working conditions

A young nurse who graduated less than two years ago has seen ten of her classmates emigrate to Australia in the last month.

The self-confessed home bird, Jenny O'Riordan, who is on the picket line at Cork University Hospital (CUH), said she doesn't want to have to get on a plane to Australia when her heart is in assisting patients in her native country.

"The people who graduated with me are in Australia. There is about 10 gone in the last month in my year that I know of [to Australia].

"There is four or five in the UK. They are all gone. Going would be an option but I don't want to leave my family. But things are so bad that you would be tempted even to do a post-grad.

People are calling in sick because they are stressed. Sometimes I finish a night and I realise I never even took a break or went to the bathroom. It is that bad.

Ms O'Riordan says all of her colleagues suffer from tremendous anxiety and stress. When they finish their shift issues surrounding lack of manpower and pay and conditions swirl around in their minds.

"I get home and I wake up in the middle of the night thinking 'I never went back to that man.' You are thinking of it at home.

"The lack of staff on the wards is shocking. I only graduated in 2017 but sometimes we are considered senior staff. Conditions are a big concern."

Jenny, who was holding a placard saying 'Cough up Leo,' says she couldn't survive without the emotional support of her parents.

"I don't have the responsibility of children or anything like that at the moment but I don't know how people afford it. I live with my mum and dad thanks be to God. If I lived out of home I don't know what I would do."

Jenny dreamed of being a nurse her whole life but says conditions are so horrendous that she is considering her options.

She is grateful for the backing of the public because the supports of patients gives them solace in their darkest hours.

Midwife Naomi O'Donovan of CUMH says she and her colleagues are tired of writing farewell cards to their colleagues.

"Collections" for staff happen as regularly as their weekly lotto contributions, she said.

"It is often more than one member of staff who is leaving. We give it with open hearts but I often think should we collect for the people who are staying? We also do a big collection for the lottery so sometimes the going away collection is as big as the lottery collection.

It is every week now. They are going to Australia. They are getting out of midwifery and going to the UK. They can't work here anymore. Out of 22 of my classmates, there is about eight left in the hospital."

Discussing the snowy conditions hundreds of nurses endured to get to the picked line Naomi said the working conditions on site were far worse than the weather.

Naomi says all they want is parity with other health care professionals.

We are not a vocation. We are a profession. A lot of people now have Masters. These are the people we want looking after us but they are not going to stay in the country.

"I qualified in 2008. My pay now is only very slightly above what I was getting as a student nurse. Most of my classmates in college have left. One of my colleagues is running a nursing home in Dublin."

Naomi says it is heartbreaking to see newly trained nurses leave for Australia and the UK.

"They are the ones who if we are having a hard day they keep us going. They are being crushed. We are being crushed alongside them. I have nightmares frequently about my job and I love my job. I do 12 hours day. That is often a thirteen hour day. We are rushed off our feet.

Sometimes I will have my lunch at six o clock. Forget about going to the toilet.

It is worrying. 'Did I remember this? Did I remember that?'

I have a degree, a post-grad and a Masters. They expect us to behave as professionals but they won't pay us. We worry about patients."

Staff at the picket line in CUH were inundated with free coffee and sandwiches from area businesses. The owner of the local Subway Katie Flannery said the nurses were their regular customers and they had to support them on this momentous day.

"Some of my friends are nurses. Their mothers are nurses. The people on the picket line are all familiar faces and we couldn't not support them on a day like today."

Susan Smith (18) from Limerick who was leaving the hospital said she fully backed the nurses in their industrial action.

My mum is a nurse. They are right to strike. She does twelve-hour shifts. They had no choice at all. My mum is in St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin. She has done the long hours all my life.

Meanwhile, Cork's 96FM ran a poll which found that over 99% of listeners were supportive of the nurses strike.

The Clinical Director of Nursing at CUH also praised the strike committee of the INMO who he says have been extremely cooperative.

Dr Mike O'Connor says he understands the frustration of nurses and midwives.

"We are running the hospital as normally as we possibly can. We had a meeting with the INMO strike committee who have been profoundly helpful. We are meeting them every ninety minutes or every two hours. And as a response to pressure points they are able to redeploy and add nurses to the hospital from the baseline they had initially prescribed.

"The INMO has been extremely helpful. In addition to that, we support the nurses' action. They have been treated badly and that is something that needs to be addressed."

The Emergency Department at CUH is operating today with half of its normal staff of nurses, seven instead of fifteen. The hospital cares for a population of in the region of half a million people.