(no subject)
Oct. 18th, 2010 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
squeefulfishEntire graduating classes of nurses in Ireland have been recruited by the NHS because the HSE won't employ them. This is what happens when you've different buckets of money - one a permanent staff bucket the other an agency staff bucket. Yes, I appreciate that permanent staff cost more than agency staff in the long term but in the short term agency are more expensive. Once I qualify, if I choose agency work I'll get a 15% bonus for being a midwife. That's not an insignificant figure.
Today, the INMO's Liam Doran described the mass exodus of Irish trained nurses and midwives as "soul-destroying" and "madness." He's right.
The signs of an imploding health service have been there for as long as I've been training. At the start, we would get agency nurses (not midwives) in occasionally for relief. We're not even getting that now. Instead, we've situations where two midwives and one student end up looking after wards of 30 high risk pregnant women. In a tertiary referral centre, accepting admissions of very complex cases not just from the Dublin area but the entire country. We've midwives looking after at least two labouring women at once, more when breaks happen because then you take over someone else's workload as well. So, up to four women. In established labour.
And then, the only real option to provide proper one to one care in labour - being a self-employed community midwife - is taken away from us in two ways. Taken away from us by the HSE demanding a minimum of three years post-registration experience before being considered for insurance under the State Clinical Indemnity Scheme and taken away from us by denying women their Constitutionally protected right to bodily autonomy.
I'm frustrated and I'm angry. The women of Ireland deserve better. Sick people in Ireland deserve better. And yeah, I'd like to be able to take more than a half hour break over an entire 13 hour shift without feeling guilty. So I kinda deserve better, too.
Today, the INMO's Liam Doran described the mass exodus of Irish trained nurses and midwives as "soul-destroying" and "madness." He's right.
The signs of an imploding health service have been there for as long as I've been training. At the start, we would get agency nurses (not midwives) in occasionally for relief. We're not even getting that now. Instead, we've situations where two midwives and one student end up looking after wards of 30 high risk pregnant women. In a tertiary referral centre, accepting admissions of very complex cases not just from the Dublin area but the entire country. We've midwives looking after at least two labouring women at once, more when breaks happen because then you take over someone else's workload as well. So, up to four women. In established labour.
And then, the only real option to provide proper one to one care in labour - being a self-employed community midwife - is taken away from us in two ways. Taken away from us by the HSE demanding a minimum of three years post-registration experience before being considered for insurance under the State Clinical Indemnity Scheme and taken away from us by denying women their Constitutionally protected right to bodily autonomy.
I'm frustrated and I'm angry. The women of Ireland deserve better. Sick people in Ireland deserve better. And yeah, I'd like to be able to take more than a half hour break over an entire 13 hour shift without feeling guilty. So I kinda deserve better, too.
