Outdated conditions at the State's largest children's hospital have been cited as one of the main reasons it has had difficulty attracting intensive care nurses in sufficient numbers. Eithne Donnellan reports.
Doctors at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, backed up by the Irish Nurses' Organisation, also claimed the pay offered to these specialist nurses was inadequate and should be reviewed.
The INO's secretary general, Mr Liam Doran, said intensive care nurses in the US can earn twice as much as intensive care nurses here. Here they earn an average of about €40,000 a year.
Dr Paul Oslizlok, a consultant paediatric cardiologist in Crumlin, said being an intensive care nurse was very labour intensive and "not brilliantly remunerated".
"I think the pay for the work they do is still a disincentive ... It's not the only factor but I've no doubt that if their pay was, for instance, double what it is now, then we would have more people going into the profession." Furthermore, facilities at the hospital were antiquated, he said. If they were new "it would be far easier to retain staff". The hospital needed to be rebuilt, he added.
Mr Karl Anderson, spokesman for the New Crumlin Hospital Group, a parents' organisation campaigning for better facilities at the hospital, said the problems could be traced back to the hospital's "appalling and outdated facilities" that staff were expected to work in.
Mr Doran said very little had been done to ensure Ireland was at the cutting edge in terms of pay and conditions so that it could attract sufficient intensive care nurses at a time of a worldwide shortage. Not enough was being done either to retain Irish-trained nurses in the system, he added.
Crumlin hospital said the main reason for its insufficient numbers of intensive care nurses was a worldwide shortage of the specialists.
Its director of nursing, Ms Geraldine Regan, said representatives had travelled to the four corners of the world trying to recruit intensive care nurses but still had about 17 vacancies.
It had 30 vacancies a year ago, so some progress was being made, she said. Latest figures from the Health Service Employers' Agency put the overall number of nursing vacancies in the State at the end of June at 771. While its report stated no nurses were recruited from abroad by Crumlin in the year to the end of June, the hospital insisted it had recruited 31 nurses from abroad over the period.
The Mater, however, was able to attract 84 nurses from overseas over the same timeframe.