Irish Examiner view: Caring profession looks in ill health

Dealing with assaults is one of the primary reasons why nurses and frontline staff plan an early exodus

From the heroes of the pandemic to victims of assault. Nurses and other healthcare professionals are choosing to work elsewhere. Picture: Liam McBurney/PA 

It seems like yesterday that nurses and other frontline health service staff were the heroes of the pandemic.

Our gratitude knew no bounds — they made up the thin blue line holding back a wave of infection, keeping all of us safe.

Now it seems our gratitude did know some bounds after all. This newspaper reported on Tuesday that an unprecedented number of nurses and other frontline staff are expected to
retire early, with the levels of physical violenc e they face one of the main causes of that exodus.

This is not anecdotal — a staggering 3,400 assaults were made against nurses, doctors, care assistants, and other healthcare workers in just the first nine months of this year.

Those figures reveal an increasingly fraught environment and it’s hardly a surprise that so many of those frontline staff want to get out: Who would care to keep working in a job where the very real possibility of assault arises on a daily basis?

There have been other indications nursing staff are not quite as cherished as one might think.

Recently this newspaper drew readers’ attention to billboards in Ireland advertising attractive healthcare positions in Australia — billboards sited very deliberately near hospitals in Cork and Dublin, where they were bound to draw the eye of staff trooping in for a day’s work (and, it appears, the possibility of assault).

At the time, the INMO said nursing staff were leaving “in droves” as the health system was effectively training people to leave, and this is the crux of the matter.

Beyond the pandemic platitudes about appreciation, nursing must be shown as an attractive employment proposition for people in Ireland — and more attractive here than on the other side of the world. Part of that, however, is making sure nursing is seen as a safe proposition.