The Irish Nurses Organisation has threatened to impose an overtime ban and stop its members from performing non-nursing duties if the Government does not address staffing shortages as a matter of urgency. A shortage of staff nurses is already forcing ward closures and deferrals of elective admissions in many acute hospitals.
The general secretary of the Irish Nurses Organisation said yesterday the union's executive had given the Department of Health until November 1st to introduce a number of essential measures. These include the expansion of the intake of student nurses next October from 1,100 to 1,350, the creation of a large number of permanent part-time posts and full incremental credits for temporary nursing staff.
An INO survey showed that Beaumont Hospital in Dublin was 63 nurses short of its permanent full-time complement, the Mater 90 nurses short and the James Connolly Memorial hospital 28 short. The new hospital in Tallaght would need 300 extra nurses "and nobody knows where they are going to come from".