Middle-ranking nursing managers have formed an organisation to lobby for better training, pay and conditions. The group, which is called the Irish Nurse Managers Network, is not intended to compete with existing nursing unions and hopes to draw members from all of them.
There are about 300 nurse managers in the health services, who are senior to ward sisters but are junior to directors of nursing. Many of them feel that they did comparatively poorly out of the nurses' pay deal earlier this year.
The president of the INMW, Ms Carmel Hickey of Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, yesterday said an inaugural meeting was held in Portlaoise on Monday. The network aimed to provide mutual support to each other on a wide range of professional issues.
The group came together in April and made a submission to the Commission on Nursing in June. Ms Hickey said that "at the time of the proposed Nurses Alliance strike we found we were looked on as management by the staff nurses and as staff by the management". Members felt their own interests had tended to be neglected.
However, she stressed that the network was aimed primarily at areas like training, education and giving mutual professional support to colleagues.