Hospitals actively looking for accommodation for over-stretched nurses
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly: 'One of the things I think we can look at in healthcare is bespoke accommodation or local accommodation for individual hospitals.'
Hospitals are looking at building accommodation for nurses, some of whom are spending close to 80% of their wages on rent and driving hours between home and work.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation’s conference heard fatal crashes are occurring as staff battle extreme tiredness after 12-hour shifts.
When the issue was put to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly at the conference in Killarney, he said “hospital-linked accommodation” is one solution.
“One of the things I think we can look at in healthcare is bespoke accommodation or local accommodation for individual hospitals,” he said. “We used to do that in the past.”
He said this is particularly urgent for nurses moving here from abroad as well as students.
“We will look at being able to provide hospital-linked accommodation for them,” he said, adding he has already received proposals from hospital managers.
Galway University Hospital showed him an administration block which used to be an accommodation block.
“I've had a conversation just in the last week with the Mater Hospital, where they're looking at various properties in Dublin close to the hospital that they could either retrofit to make them appropriate for accommodation or indeed start to build their own individual blocks,” he said.
“So individual hospitals are now looking at this.”
He welcomed this as “very positive” and said hospitals facing the most difficulty with recruitment are prioritising the idea.
He added: “We'll continue to have those conversations with the department, with the HSE, and with the estates team in the HSE to see where we might be able to invest to start creating some of this accommodation.”
INMO president Karen McGowan called for the “immense challenges” of the cost-of-living crisis to be tackled by Government.
“The rising costs of rent are not keeping pace with the salaries of nurses and midwives,” she warned.
“For instance, if a newly qualified nurse or midwife living in Dublin or Cork is paying up to €1,800 on rent, that means over 77% of their take-home pay each month is going towards rent.
"Again, not sustainable in the long-term.”
She said this is a key issue for every hospital now.
“Speak to any Director of Nursing or Midwifery and they will tell you that housing is now one of the most cited barriers to not just recruiting staff but retaining them,” she said.
A motion calling on the Department of Health to fund accommodation and creches was unanimously passed with speakers sharing distressing examples of the pressures.
A delegate from the Cork Voluntary Branch said: “A 12-hour shift on days is not a 12-hour shift, it could be 13, 14 by the time you get off. If you have to commute two hours home, you are barely turning around to come back for your next shift.
“And we all know that with the night shift, that is a different tiredness. Unfortunately, a number of our colleagues have died on the way home from these shifts. It’s just crazy.”
The conference, in the Gleneagle Hotel, is focused on the need for safe staffing.
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