Strikes will not improve our hospitals - Nurses’ industrial action

IT IS hard to imagine how work stoppages by nurses in hospital emergency departments are meant to improve the care of patients. Yet that is the course of action members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) have decided to take.

All members working in all of the country’s emergency departments have voted overwhelmingly for a campaign of industrial action including strike. The reason: overcrowding, inadequate staffing levels and what the organisation describes as ‘the ongoing compromising of patient care’.

While the frustration of nurses is understandable, there is little doubt that patient care will be further compromised by this action. But, perhaps, that is the point the INMO is trying to make to force HSE management and the Government to face up to the crisis in our acute health service.

The uncomfortable fact is that the system is not just under strain but on the point of total collapse. If emergency care in the health service was a patient it would be in intensive care and on the brink of flatlining.

Much has been promised by successive governments and health service managers over the past 10 years but, despite this, the overcrowding situation is deteriorating further.

So will making matters worse make things better?

According to the INMO, the campaign of industrial action is necessary as a direct result of the failure of the Government and health service management over many years to recognise the overcrowding crisis and to allocate the necessary resources to properly address it.

In the most recent ballot, more than 92% of members voted in favour of taking industrial action, involving the withdrawal of labour, saying they have simply had enough of broken promises.

The problem, though, is not so much lack of recognition of the overcrowding crisis but the failure to put into effect proper measures to tackle it.

Former Taoiseach Brian Cowen once described the health ministerial brief as ‘Angola’. Cynical and all though that characterisation may seem, he had a point. Being made health minister is a bit like the blooding of greyhounds in coursing. You don’t get to choose it but to endure it.

Many very able politicians have come to grief as ministers for health, among them, Cowen himself, Mary Harney and, more recently, James Reilly, who did not enjoy the life associated with that name.

The HSE and the Government argue that things are improving, and that the overcrowding situation is set to improve as 150 to 200 beds are expected to open by the end of the month. They also point to the fact that October figures showed there were 730 more nurses than last year.

That response sounds quite reasonable but very confrontational. With the INMO gunning for a strike and health service management accusing them of spin, the omens are not good for sensible discussions to take place.

Even the most intractable problems can by solved by engagement.