IT IS ONLY a matter of time before psychiatric nurses will be explaining to coroners courts why deceased patients who had lived in the community did not receive more regular visits, the general secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) has warned.
Des Kavanagh told the PNA’s annual conference in Carlow yesterday that for the past eight or nine months, nurses’ mileage had been reduced by 20 per cent in the Cavan-Monaghan mental health services but managers had not identified what patients were not to be visited and had not liaised with GPs on the implication of this policy.
“As a result, the nurses have been providing services without being paid the full mileage allowances they are entitled to . . . I am left with no choice now but to issue instruction that as from May 1st nurses provide only those services for which they are paid.”
The HSE said the Government had revised the travel expenses for all civil and public servants and mental health services must comply with this directive.