INMO 'doesn’t have any faith' in HSE plans to resolve staff shortages in hospitals

Phil Ni Sheaghdha said: 'The HSE has promised us it will produce a pay and numbers strategy. It still hasn't produced it.'

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has said it has no faith in HSE plans to fix staff shortages, with over half its members under pressure to regularly work extra shifts.

General secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha said shortages leading to unsafe conditions for patients came up repeatedly in its Work and Wellbeing survey 2024.

It found 76% of nurses and midwives said the staffing levels and the skill mix of people on duty do not meet the clinical and patient needs of their workplaces. Among that group, 92% said patient safety is at risk as a result.

The impact of this on staff was also clear with just over one in five attending their GP for work-related stress. Some 63% of respondents said they had thought about leaving work in the last month and among them 44.5% linked this directly to workplace stress.

Ms Ni Sheaghdha said: “The HSE has promised us it will produce a pay and numbers strategy.

“What it is saying there is the amount of finance it has, it will translate that into the numbers it can recruit this year. It still hasn't produced it.” 

She added: “So we don’t have any faith in what the HSE tells us.” 

Under an agreed Safe Staffing Framework, numbers and the type of nurses or midwives on duty should match patient needs. However, she said, instead over three-quarters of INMO members are seeing a mismatch every day.

Derogations

A key issue for the INMO is the ongoing HSE recruitment freeze, and she criticised the limited impact of exemptions, known as derogations, on staffing issues. She said directors of nursing have advised the union that “the application process for derogation can take up to four months”. 

Speaking to reporters on the first day of the INMO annual delegate conference at Croke Park, Ms Ni Sheaghdha said they have seen these delays pushing people to apply for work outside of the HSE.

She warned this is also affecting community care as numbers of Public Health Nurses are decreasing.

“We are trying to move service from hospitals into community. That requires you to recruit more staff and the moratorium includes staff in the community," she said. 

Patient safety

She called for progress on the Patient (Safety) Licencing Bill saying: “We have to take the power away from the HSE and make sure that Hiqa, when it inspects, has the power to say that’s what’s safe so that’s what you have to apply.” 

The Bill will give Hiqa, as regulator, extended authority to monitor and inspect public hospitals as well as private sites.

Out-going INMO president, Karen McGowan, also warned the findings show nurses and midwives are struggling.

“More than four years on from the start of the covid pandemic, INMO members are still dealing with the effects in their workplaces, in their practise, and in their own health,” she said.

“Meanwhile, the government has failed to make progress on hospital overcrowding, and conditions for staff and patients in many places has gotten far worse than we could have imagined.”