More action needed to ensure healthcare workers are better protected, INMO president says

The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) must do more to address the working conditions of healthcare workers, the president of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has said.

Speaking at an event to mark Workers Memorial Day at the Garden of remembrance in Dublin, Karen McGowan told HSA officials, Minister of State Neale Richmond and representatives of other trade unions as well employers’ organisations that “phenomenal” work had been done to make hospitals and similar settings safer but that with 23 healthcare workers having died during the pandemic and many hundreds now feeling the effects of long Covid a lot more “investment and improvements” are required to ensure that those working in the sector are better protected in the event of another health emergency.

Referencing the fact that agriculture and construction are routinely regarded as the two main sectors in which work-related fatalities and injuries occur in Ireland, Ms McGowan said: “I suppose when people think of healthcare, they think of nice hospitals that are adequately staffed and can deal with everything that will come their way. But they’re not.

“If you’re in construction, you need to have scaffolding to keep your staff safe. But there was no scaffolding for nurses and midwives during this pandemic, that was very apparent.

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“So this is why it’s really important to be here today to highlight the risk that isn’t always visible to the eye, but is a risk because our members, nurse the midwives, a lot of them now are dealing with this, the side effects of long Covid and we don’t know how they’re going to progress as they get older, or how debilitating it is going to be.”

“And we can’t leave anybody behind as a result of acquiring a workplace injury because it is an injury sustained while doing the work that we do.

HAS Interim CEO Mark Cullen said the organisation had received additional resources from Government in recent months and that healthcare was one of the areas on which its new Occupational Health Division will focus.

“There are significant resources going into that division,” he said. “We have an inspection team that’s dedicated to the health and social care sector. So we have increased our inspections in that sector.”

He said there has been a number of meetings with the INMO in recent weeks with a view to addressing the concerns they have raised about safety in the sector with the union, among other issues, citing the high number of assaults on its members, and that this engagement will continue.

Mr Cullen said, meanwhile, that the HAS’s latest figure continue to suggest the highest rates of fatalities and other work-related incidents involving injuries occur in agriculture and construction with older worker disproportionately affected.

He told those attending the event that eight people had died this year in work-related incidents, up three on the figures issued on Thursday for the first quarter of this year.

Irish Congress of Trade Unions general secretary said the International Labour Organisation has recently recognised health and safety as a fundamental workplace right and Ictu will work closely with the HSA and Government to make that right a reality. Mr Richmond said he is committed to ensuring the Government does everything it can to ensure the provision safe working environments.