Billboards encouraging 'overworked and overburdened' healthcare workers to move to Oz

Dr Fergal Hickey of the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine said that Australia was “a much better choice” for healthcare professionals.

Billboards encouraging healthcare workers to move to Australia are causing controversy as they have been appearing near hospitals around the country.

The adverts have been spotted in Dublin and Cork.

The billboards seen near the Mater hospital in Dublin are “probably a bit cheeky” an Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) representative said.

Kind of depressing to see this billboard on Douglas St. But it probably sums up the situation here for health workers. pic.twitter.com/hv4laK2OiS

— John Roycroft (@torban69) October 13, 2022

Maeve Brehony, assistant director of industrial relations and the INMO representative for the Mater Hospital, said that it was not surprising that young medical professionals were attracted to working in Australia as the working conditions there were far better than in Ireland.

Dr Fergal Hickey of the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine said that Australia was “a much better choice” for healthcare professionals who could not continue to work under the current conditions in Irish public hospitals indefinitely.

“They are leaving the country in droves”.

Billboards, commissioned by the Department of Health in Victoria, Australia, have been erected near the Mater hospital in Dublin encouraging healthcare workers to make the move.

Highly sought

Ms Brehony acknowledged that the billboard was provocative but not surprising given how highly sought after Irish nurses were.

“We should be seeing action from our own management. We should see the HSE and the Mater using billboards to recruit,” she told Newstalk Breakfast.

There was an “unfortunate pace of activity” when it came to recruitment in Ireland, she said.

Workers were voting with their feet and moving elsewhere to work, where the pay might be the same, but the conditions were far better.

The Irish system was effectively training people to leave, she warned.

'Overburdened and overworked'

The numbers currently being recruited were not keeping pace with those leaving.

Irish healthcare professionals were “overburdened and overworked” she added. In other countries there was a better work-life balance.

It would only be through more recruitment and retention that “the tide will be turned”.

There was a lot of red tape when it comes to recruiting nurses, said Ms Brehony.

There should not be a wait of months for a starting date. There also needed to be legal backing for safe staffing levels.

Dr Hickey pointed out that Ireland has only two-thirds of the acute hospital beds of the OECD average.

The Irish health system was clearly very short of beds. There was a problem with the flow of patients through hospitals, a delay of five hours could increase mortality.

This was an example of Nero fiddling while Rome burns, he told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.

“We know the problem, it needs to be fixed.” 

The establishment of a task force to address problems in emergency departments was welcome, said Dr Hickey, but it was “tinkering with the problem” if the issue of bed capacity was not addressed.