Childcare is expensive in Ireland. This expense is usually reduced by one partner (usually female) working less hours to concentrate on family issues. In the business, people who work fulltime are known as Whole-Time-Equivalents and anybody working less than fulltime hours is known as a decimal place of that e.g. 0.50 WTE for somebody working half the hours. In my experience of working in three hospitals I've found quite a majority of nurses work less than fulltime hours. Likely, this is an "Irish thing" and the Channel 4 figures might not reflect the true situation for nurses in Ireland.Yep, we have lots of doctors and nurses in Ireland. Getting them to work full time is the problem.
It's an international thing. The data shows that when economic circumstances allow women are more likely to work fewer hours. In other words in you increase their pay they work less. Women tend to work to live, men tend to live to work. We can talk all we like about societal expectations and all that but it it mainly driven by biology, It's just the way we're made.Childcare is expensive in Ireland. This expense is usually reduced by one partner (usually female) working less hours to concentrate on family issues. In the business, people who work fulltime are known as Whole-Time-Equivalents and anybody working less than fulltime hours is known as a decimal place of that e.g. 0.50 WTE for somebody working half the hours. In my experience of working in three hospitals I've found quite a majority of nurses work less than fulltime hours. Likely, this is an "Irish thing" and the Channel 4 figures might not reflect the true situation for nurses in Ireland.
Is is indeed an "Irish thing" and it's driven at least partly by our insane tax system that inflicts a top marginal rate on the average industrial wage. Coupled with individualisation, it incentivises second earners to cut back on hours worked and keep their earnings out of the top tax rate.Childcare is expensive in Ireland. This expense is usually reduced by one partner (usually female) working less hours to concentrate on family issues. In the business, people who work fulltime are known as Whole-Time-Equivalents and anybody working less than fulltime hours is known as a decimal place of that e.g. 0.50 WTE for somebody working half the hours. In my experience of working in three hospitals I've found quite a majority of nurses work less than fulltime hours. Likely, this is an "Irish thing" and the Channel 4 figures might not reflect the true situation for nurses in Ireland.
Yep, we have lots of doctors and nurses in Ireland. Getting them to work full time is the problem.
There is no evidence for this. It is just like the pseudoscientific propaganda the British Empire promulgated about Irish/Indian/African people being biologically stupid and lazy.We can talk all we like about societal expectations and all that but it it mainly driven by biology, It's just the way we're made.
Is is indeed an "Irish thing" and it's driven at least partly by our insane tax system that inflicts a top marginal rate on the average industrial wage. Coupled with individualisation, it incentivises second earners to cut back on hours worked and keep their earnings out of the top tax rate.
Why be amazed by stuff on Channel 4, after all, don't they broadcast other quality programmes like "Celebrity Detox" and other factual offerings?Report on Channel 4 tonight about a study in UK that shows UK in 15th place out of 19 western countries for nurses per capita. I was amazed to see that Ireland was 2nd.
Can you post a link for that please? The only information I can find on that is a survey of GP's who were asked about their work practices. In the UK only one in four GP's work fulltime (37.5 hours a week or more). I find it hard to believe that three times as many work full time here.You have to be very careful parsing stats and reports about nursing numbers. Not every country defines a nurse in the same way and some countries leave out some categories. For example, some places will count nurses working in hospitals but not in GP practices or nursing homes. Others will count midwives as part of the whole nursing cohort but others leave them out completely.
When we did a project on this a few years ago we found some studies included healthcare assistants, nursing students, etc. Others included nurse managers, lecturers, even pharmaceutical reps with nursing degrees who were technically registered as nurses but not clinically active. You also have many varying levels of nursing skills, for example the NHS has much higher numbers of specialist nurses and advanced nurse practitioners, roles which don't even exist in some other countries. I haven't seen the Channel 4 report but it is likely missing some of this nuance.
GP might seem like a different story as about 84% of GPs in Ireland work full-time.
There's no "if" about it. This study from the NHS shows that 42% of female doctors worked less than full time. That figure was only 7% for male doctors. That is almost totally linked to having children.The decline in FTEs in GP may be linked with the increased percentage of women in GP but the changes are not linear, e.g. as female GPs get older they tend to increase their hours. Regardless, the absolute and relative productivity of GPs has increased. We do still need more GPs, but it is largely because of the changing nature of the work rather than the nature of the workers.
What, that women and men behave differently in work? I don't think that's pseudoscience promulgated by the British Empire.There is no evidence for this. It is just like the pseudoscientific propaganda the British Empire promulgated about Irish/Indian/African people being biologically stupid and lazy.
Yes, they want to work less to send time with their children and when economic circumstances allow they do so. Therefore a pay increase is what allows that to happen. There's an American study on it but I can't find it at the moment.I don't know what experience/evidence you are basing this on but I have never once heard a nurse or doctor colleague say they are cutting back their hours for tax reasons. It is virtually always for childcare, looking after older parents, or because of burnout.
Which is nonsensical and a barrier to entry.@arbitron above makes some good points, Even nurses who worked in Italy's health service do not have all their qualifications recognised in Ireland and must sit exams before they can work as nurses here.
That means our figures for nurses are understated.Furthermore, many nurses in other countries do the work Health Care Assistants do in Ireland.
I agree that it's very hard to do a like for like comparison.These points throw some dark on Channel 4's figures.
I agree with you that ANPs/AMPs are brilliant to work with and make a big difference to a team, but it's by no means a panacea and management are often cagey.I'd love to see the role of Nurse Practitioner become common here. They can do many of the things that doctors do.
And yet as of 2022 the Medical Council have 21,680 registered with 18,424 who are clinically active. That number is increasing year on year.Therefore out of 15,000+ doctors (hospital & GP), if we take the most negative approximation, we have maybe 1,600 WTEs fewer due to part-time work.
@arbitron, I've worked as a quality manager and my current role includes process and systems design to increase efficiency. It is almost always the case that organisations and processes that have evolved organically are inefficient. In my limited experiences of Hospitals they seem grossly inefficient with massive duplication of process, inefficient data collection and transfer, almost no patient tracking and no real time monitoring of patient flows. Therefore when I hear about staff shortages and lack of resources my first reaction is that the problem is misallocation of resources and inefficient processes that waste the time of valuable and scarce human resources. We have plenty of nurses and doctors and we've had one of the best funded healthcare systems in the world for the last 3 decades. We just structure and run it very badly.
"Quantity of output" is an efficiency measure, not an effectiveness measure, IMO as you're attempting to do more for the same or lower cost without measuring outcomes.But in a real world scenario, resources are limited, and therefore the quantity of output you achieve (aka effectiveness)
There will usually be a number of factors which influence the decision to work part time. Very high marginal tax rates combined with very high childcare costs combine to make it economically unattractive for parents with young children to both work full time. Given that women are far more likely to want to be the one to spend more time with young children, for obvious biological/evolutionary reasons, as women come to dominate Medicine in general (around 60% of Irish graduates are women) and general practice in particular finding ways to keep them working as much as possible makes good economic sense. That's a different issue to the inefficiency that's baked into the entire industry and it's not the same as "making them work more hours" but workforce participation rates should be part of the discussion when you are discussing a workforce.I couldn't agree with you more. We have plenty of people, we just don't use them very well and we don't give them the right tools and environments to work at the top of their training. That's different from saying we need them to work more hours though, which was the original point made.
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