THE IRISH NURSES and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has called for the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) watchdog to be given more powers to protect patients and staff.

The nurses union has “lost faith” in the HSE’s commitment and ability to ensure safe staffing levels amid “inquiry after inquiry” into patient deaths in hospitals, according to general secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha.

Speaking on the first day of the INMO’s annual delegate conference, which brings hundreds of nurses and midwives together, Ní Sheaghdha said the executive council of the union will bring forward an “emergency” motion tomorrow which sets out how the Government can “do better”. 

“Having inquiry after inquiry after the fact when the incident has occurred is simply not acceptable any longer,” she said.

Ní Sheaghdha said that during the recent inquest into the death of Aoife Johnston in University Hospital Limerick, evidence was heard from a nurse who left her employment because of what happened in the emergency department that weekend.

“This isn’t just one hospital. You cannot have a moratorium [on new HSE staff] and say it is not affecting safe care – it is,” Ní Sheaghdha claimed.

She added that nurses working in emergency departments in UHL and other hospitals are “doing their best”, and that this is continually recognised by the general public.

The lack of a formal, funded framework to ensure safe staffing levels in the HSE and the current recruitment freeze set in place by CEO Bernard Gloster will be the key issues in focus at the INMO conference. 

Ní Sheaghdha said that there have been some exceptions to the hiring freeze, such as in the areas of maternity services and critical care, but that it can take up to four months for managers in specific locations to get permission to hire new staff, which is in itself causing a delay in settings where patient safety is being compromised. 

She further said that HSE managers are facing “layers of bureaucracy” before being able to hire staff in critically understaffed areas.

“The HSE has promised us that they will produce a pay and numbers strategy, think about that, they are saying there is an amount of finance they have, and they will determine the numbers they can recruit this year – they still haven’t produced it, and it’s already May,” Ní Sheaghdha said. 

“We don’t have any faith in what the HSE tells us. 

“We have to now look at taking the power away from the HSE and make sure that HIQA, when they inspect, have the power to say what’s safe, and [numbers] that need to be employed. 

Ní Sheaghdha said that community nursing services were not growing at the pace needed to help combat hospital overcrowding. 

“We are now averaging on 500 people on trolleys a day,” she said.