I heard a discussion this morning on RTE radio about the HSE's drive to recruit Irish nurses from the UK and further afield. Liam Doran was not in the discussion. Is he ill?
I think until we find out what's happened to him you should refrain from such derogatory comments. Are you not worried about him as well??Met him once at Fota - he was in the group ahead of ours. Heard they put on prawn sandwiches in the clubhouse especially for him...
I think until we find out what's happened to him you should refrain from such derogatory comments. Are you not worried about him as well??
I met a UK recruiter at a jobs fair in Dublin. She said that they would take every newly qualified midwife in Ireland that they could get and would still be short
If pay and conditions are better in the private sector and they can still compete with the public sector then we should be looking at the structural inefficiencies in the Public Sector which make them uncompetitive. When those are addressed the resources will be there to give pay increases.Furthermore, nurses who work here tend to accept positions in the private sector where the pay and conditions are better. There has been a drain of nursing staff to private hospitals.
Contract staff to not get the same T’s & C’s and full time permanent nurses and, crucially, they do not have a job for life and do not accrue pension entitlements. Taking that pension cost and the lack of labour mobility into account I find it hard to believe that the real total cost of contract staff is higher.The whole set up has been well below par for cost. Agency nurses cost much more than a hospital staff nurse. Furthermore, agency nurses while good at their profession are paid hourly and give an hourly return. Fulltime staff nurses give much more. What I am pointing out are no-brainer situations. Have we got anybody with brains running the country?
If pay and conditions are better in the private sector and they can still compete with the public sector then we should be looking at the structural inefficiencies in the Public Sector which make them uncompetitive. When those are addressed the resources will be there to give pay increases.
Contract staff to not get the same T’s & C’s and full time permanent nurses and, crucially, they do not have a job for life and do not accrue pension entitlements. Taking that pension cost and the lack of labour mobility into account I find it hard to believe that the real total cost of contract staff is higher.
If we are training more nurses than we can employ then we should reduce the number we train.
I don't accept that contract staff are more expensive in the long run as they do not accrue pension entitlements.
The Belgian healthcare system is regarded as amongst the best in the world. There are some public hospitals but most are private. They all compete with each other. The public get an excellent service.
If the state could deliver an excellent healthcare service I'd be all in favour of them doing it but they have demonstrated again and again that they are not competent to do so.
If there were no private hospitals then they state would have to provide more. Every euro spent there is a euro that the state doesn't have to spend. Private healthcare is a massive subsidy of the public system.
Leper,
We both agree that the healthcare system is a shambles.
We both agree (I think) is that the core problem is not funding.
You are strongly opposed to private hospitals in general and private A&E departments in particular.
Can I ask you why this is? Do you think we would have a better system if there were no public hospitals?
I don't understand how you think a person visiting a private A&E department, thereby not visiting a public A&E and not consuming that public service does not constitute a saving to the state. The same goes for a person opting for a procedure in a private hospital. We can argue that a two-tier system is unfair but that's a different point.
I don't care what system is in place, public, private or a mix of both, as long as it works. I have no faith in the people who run our public system. I include the medical establishment, both doctors and Nurses; they are as part of the problem as the managers and administrators. I do not mean individual nurses or doctors but their representatives, the medical establishment, who have opposed change and improvement for generations.
What we have doesn't work. Throwing money at it hasn't worked. Why not try something different, why not look at the best systems among our neighbours and duplicate what works?
If the Unions are really interested in delivering a world class system for the public and not just feathering their own nests then they would cooperate fully without looking for their pound of flesh.
If anybody has been watching my posts they will see that I warned of what would happen by the government's deliberate failure to replace retiring nurses. Unfortunately, it has come to happen. We need 500 nurses immediately. .
Do we? According to the OECD, Ireland has the third highest number of practicing nurses per 1,000 of population in the OECD and this number has increased by 1% since 2000 http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/9789264183896-en/03/03/g3-03-01.html?itemId=/content/chapter/9789264183896-30-en&_csp_=e92c9913836e5fffbbecfc400984a40b
We've more nurses than the Nordics, except for Denmark. We've almost double the number of nurses than the EU average. Clearly Irish nurses aren't as productive as foreign nurses, so why have we special pay deals and recruitment campaigns for nurses? Especially since, according to the OECD,
nurses in Ireland have relatively high salaries; higher than in e.g. the UK or Norway.
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/4211011ec032.pdf?expires=1438882268&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=543DA9F59D1566788C762A3E5653B02C
Perhaps rather than focusing on throwing money at a problem – always the Irish response – we should look at importing foreign work practices into our health service, to bring it up to EU standards. It's not unreasonable in the current economic situation to expect nurses to be at least as efficient as their EU equivalents.
Its nice to see a thread like this that gets better as it goes on. After starting as a silly piece on Liam Doran it has become an interesting discussion.
Leper, if PMU says that we have almost twice as many nurses as the OECD average, you will have to better than the above. Is it true and if so why do we need more nurses.
Can I suggest that people working in a poorly managed organisation often work harder and longer with less effect than people working in a well run organisation. Poor productivity is usually a management issue rather than a worker issue.
Improved work practices might allow Irish healthcare staff to deliver a better service.
That we have a very poorly run health service was demonstrated clearly by the attempt to computerise the health service payroll system, which was abandoned after spending €200 million.
You believe that agency staff are more expensive than full time staff. Well I don't know much about health staff costs, but I do know a little about pensions. If a public sector worked retires on a pension of €40,000 pa based on their final salary, that costs the taxpayer about €1.2 million (discounted at 3.33%)so it is very possible that agency staff at a much higher hourly rate work out cheaper than full-time staff.
OK PMU let's stop recruiting nurses. You said we have double the EU average of nurses (add in doctors, attendants and health care assistants in other countries and see what figures you come up with). ..
If you say this is 'mismanagement of figures' the fault lies with the Department of Health. OECD member states provide the figures to the OECD for this publication. The OECD is itself disinterested but provides the statistics for informational purposes and to aid policy making in participating states.The OECD says this and that. Largely what it says in relation to nurses and healthcare staff in general is purely a mismanagement of figures.
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