Up to €1 Billion in extra payments to State Employees

The best thing that could happen to help those working in the healthcare sector is to restructure the whole sector so that it functions properly. That would alleviate more stress and frustration and free up more resources than any tokenistic payment or extra holidays. People in that sector are generally well paid and have long holidays. What they need is the alleviation of the day to day frustrations caused by working in a badly structured and grossly wasteful health service.
 
arbitron said:
Nurses have been highlighting understaffing
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Gordon Gekko said:
If they’re overdue a break, take a holiday
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That's part of the problem. If staff are on leave, in an environment where there is under staffing, it adds to the pressure of those remaining on duty. And in the circumstances of a pandemic, may be inclined to delay taking their leave leading to incidents of burnout and fatigue over the long term.
 
There's talk of an extra bank holiday to "pay back frontline staff" ... how on earth does that do that? There still needs to be frontline cover on bank holidays. I don't get it.

If they said it was to boost hospitality now that places are back open I'd get it, but not this.
 
Leo said:
All the time while we have one of the highest number of nurses per capita in the EU!
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That figure needs context as to whether they are full time or part time, public or private, clinical/research/managerial, hospital/GP/nursing home, etc. When you look at reports on this (OECD, etc.) they qualify those stats by saying that high numbers per capita can still mean staff shortages depending on demand and the scope of work performed. So if we have fewer doctors and healthcare assistants per capita then more of the work is done by nurses.
 
arbitron said:
That figure needs context as to whether they are full time or part time, public or private, clinical/research/managerial, hospital/GP/nursing home, etc. When you look at reports on this (OECD, etc.) they qualify those stats by saying that high numbers per capita can still mean staff shortages depending on demand and the scope of work performed. So if we have fewer doctors and healthcare assistants per capita then more of the work is done by nurses.
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It would also need context of the demographics for Ireland versus other EU countries rather than just a raw 'per capita'.
 
arbitron said:
That figure needs context as to whether they are full time or part time, public or private, clinical/research/managerial, hospital/GP/nursing home, etc.
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Wouldn't it be the staff shortage numbers that need more context? If we have more than most, but still have shortages, then it's likely those we do have aren't deployed in the right areas?
 
odyssey06 said:
It would also need context of the demographics for Ireland versus other EU countries rather than just a raw 'per capita'.
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True, we have one of the youngest populations. 20% of our population is over 60 when the European average is 26%.
 
Leo said:
Wouldn't it be the staff shortage numbers that need more context? If we have more than most, but still have shortages, then it's likely those we do have aren't deployed in the right areas?
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The picture is very complex.

Some countries (e.g. Austria) only report the number of nurses working in hospitals, so their figures look much lower than ours. Meanwhile we include nurses who may be lecturing or working in a lab which artificially inflates our numbers. It is easy to look at a headline figure but the data behind the numbers are nuanced and you quickly realise it is tabloid stuff.

Nursing jobs are not all interchangeable. There can be complete skills mismatches, e.g. having lots of nurses trained in paediatric emergency medicine doesn't help if we are trying to staff adult ICUs. It can take years to retrain in a specialist area.

We also need to consider the ratios of nurses to other staff too. We have lower doctor numbers compared to OECD average, which can add to the nursing workload.

The infrastructure and resources matter too. Other countries may have fewer nurses because they have modern electronic records which allow the staff to work more efficiently. There really is a lot more to it than measuring the whole time equivalents.
 
arbitron said:
The infrastructure and resources matter too. Other countries may have fewer nurses because they have modern electronic records which allow the staff to work more efficiently. There really is a lot more to it than measuring the whole time equivalents.
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That's a really important point and creates massive duplication of processes within the HSE.
A relative of mine was admitted to St. James's Hospital through one department and then again through a different department about 6 weeks later. He had two different patient numbers, two different sets of records and they had no idea that the other set existed. If that level of duplication exists within one hospital I can only imagine what it's like nationally.
That's the sort of thing that needs to be fixes, along with standardisation of contracts etc. There is literally billions to be saved and thousands of people who could be redeployed to useful roles.
 
Purple said:
A relative of mine was admitted to St. James's Hospital through one department and then again through a different department about 6 weeks later. He had two different patient numbers, two different sets of records and they had no idea that the other set existed. If that level of duplication exists within one hospital I can only imagine what it's like nationally.
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Same in the hospital my wife works in, administration blame GDPR!
 
Leo said:
Same in the hospital my wife works in, administration blame GDPR!
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How many different nursing grades and contracts are there in her hospital? How many variations of contracts are there in total?

There must be thousands of different contracts with different leave arrangements and T's & C's in across the HSE. Isn't that the reason PPARS failed? How many people work in payroll in the HSE and how much does that cost?
There's more than enough money spent on health, we just choose to waste so much of it that there's not enough where it's needed.
 
Purple said:
How many different nursing grades and contracts are there in her hospital? How many variations of contracts are there in total?
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Somewhere approaching infinity....it's one of the larger hospitals that subsumed other smaller hospitals over the decades, all the variations of contracts and T&Cs from the legacy hospitals remain. Things like leave and rosters are still managed via whiteboards and complex spreadsheets because the IT system can't cope with all the variations.
 
Leo said:
Somewhere approaching infinity....it's one of the larger hospitals that subsumed other smaller hospitals over the decades, all the variations of contracts and T&Cs from the legacy hospitals remain. Things like leave and rosters are still managed via whiteboards and complex spreadsheets because the IT system can't cope with all the variations.
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And the cost (waste) probably run into the millions.
 
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arbitron said:
Some countries (e.g. Austria) only report the number of nurses working in hospitals, so their figures look much lower than ours. Meanwhile we include nurses who may be lecturing or working in a lab which artificially inflates our numbers. It is easy to look at a headline figure but the data behind the numbers are nuanced and you quickly realise it is tabloid stuff.
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Yea, but the INMO calls them all front line staff and wants a bribe for them all for working through the pandemic. Judging by the calls to RTE this morning most of them don't want it and would rather see the money spent fixing things.
 
This term 'frontline' is nonsense. What is a frontline worker? You may aswell try to reward all the 'good' workers...
 
Leo said:
Same in the hospital my wife works in, administration blame GDPR!
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Shout it from the rooftops! GDPR (inflicted on us by our witless MEPs) has been an absolute disaster that appears to benefit only criminals and faudsters.
 
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