Hospital Trolleys

[mathepac]

Hi Mathepac. Can you say what perks the non medical staff of the HSE get?

Based on Health Service Employment Census: Section 1 National Overview December 2016, 9.1% are classified in the Medical/Dental Staff category. The other 90.9% enjoy perks such as

• nurses /others being paid for meal breaks,
• unionised workers getting an hour off per week to cash non-existent pay or expenses cheques,
• operatives getting paid gate allowances for closing non-existant gates,
• and forklift drivers who get a forklift driving allowance for driving forklifts
• 5 uncertified "sick-days/absences" per year.

[broken link removed]

 

[Leper]

Based on Health Service Employment Census: Section 1 National Overview December 2016, 9.1% are classified in the Medical/Dental Staff category. The other 90.9% enjoy perks such as

• nurses /others being paid for meal breaks,
• operatives getting paid gate allowances for closing non-existant gates,
• and forklift drivers who get a forklift driving allowance for driving forklifts
• 5 uncertified "sick-days/absences" per year.

[broken link removed]

1. Nurses and others do not get paid for meal breaks. Fact.
2. I never heard of anybody getting paid gate allowance for non existent gates
3. I don't know any fork lift drivers and having worked in 3 large hospitals in payroll, I cannot ever remember paying such an allowance. But, to the fair I am not too sure of your assertion.
4. 7 uncertified "sick days" in two rolling years are given where necessary. Not five in one year. Fact.

Does anybody know any fork lift driver working in the HSE? I wonder how many forklift drivers are there?

I can categorically vouch for items 1, 2, 4 as answered by me. Mathepac means well but his points made are not correct.

 

[Leper]

Let's bring up some more facts:-

1. A nurse is due to come on duty at 8.00am to take over from the Night Staff. The nurse will attend earlier because there is a "hand over" of patients and their ailments to the day staff. The hand-over time encroaches on the staff going off duty and the staff going on duty. Hand over time is not paid either. In some wards (e.g. Cardiac, Cancer etc) the hand-over period can be anything up to an hour. They are handing over human beings with illness, not inanimate objects. The same thing happens when the nursing day staff are handing over to the night staff later. In the more serious wards the hand-over is word exact by the giver and the receiver.

2. Nurses get paid for working a 39 hour week. Lunch breaks are not included in this. Nurses work overtime e.g. night duty 8.00pm - 8.00am. This is not 12 hours of overtime. The meal time is deducted.

3. Nurses like the Gardaí were treated pretty badly for years. The Gardaí got their act together and got organised. Remember one Presidential Candidate attributed some his failure to get elected due to a Late Late Show outburst that he had offered Gardaí "a pint or a transfer" (meant to be funny, but backfired). The nurses are no different. They were getting nowhere so they organised and Liam Doran probably has the easiest of trade union jobs representing them. The nurses will take no more of what was hitherto dished out to them.

Nurses are voting with their feet. They go to work in the UK where they are more appreciated e.g. receive generous relocation allowances, availability of "free" nursing courses that they would have to pay for in dear ol' Ireland. Irish nurses are on demand in the Middle East. Australia wants them. So does the USA. Nurses can earn quite a lot of money abroad, come home later, get a job outside or inside of the hospital systems and pay cash for good housing while the rest of us must beg for mortgages. The public and private hospital systems are losing nurses at an alarming rate. Who would blame the nurses? A shortage of nurses is detrimental to patients.

 

[Purple]

Hi Purple. Newsflash !!!!! Liam Doran's remit is to represent the members of his union (nurses + midwives). He is not the conscience of the HSE hospitals or the private hospitals or the tax payer.

I agree. I wish he would stop pretending to be it though. He has no professional interest in sick people or the quality of medical or nursing care in the health service.

 

[Purple]

Nurses are only one aspect of the HSE.


Marion

True, if the only problem in the Health Service was whatever structural shortcomings there are with how nurses work we would have a much better health service.
For the record I think nurses generally do a good job and are competent and capable. My issue is with the ridged and seemingly inefficient work practices in the Health Service generally. It doesn't matter how hard someone works or how skilled they are, if the structure they are working within in inefficient then they are inefficient.

 

[Purple]

having worked in 3 large hospitals in payroll

Can I ask if the nursing contracts were exactly the same in each hospital, how many grades of nurses there were and if they clocked in and out using a scanner/reader and their wages were calculated automatically?
Have thinks improved or is the HSE's payroll system still as shambolic as this?

 

[jjm]

Purple the problem is not the unions.Have you being Reading the papers /Watching Television.See how much Support there is when someone tries to do there job correctly .

 

[Firefly]

Nurses are only one aspect of the HSE.


Marion

Hi Marion,

I agree, however it's all I'm hearing..."we need more nurses, we need more nurses"...

 

[Leo]

I agree, however it's all I'm hearing..."we need more nurses, we need more nurses"...

Mainly because the people doing most of the shouting and getting most of the air time are those who make more money in subs when more nurses are hired. If their income was capped, I wonder would they spend more time focusing on conditions and practices in order to try improve the working lives of their members rather than simply focus on increasing numbers.

 

[jjm]

Firefly/Leo Google .No magic wand' to recruit nurses says Harris .

 

[Leo]

Firefly/Leo Google .No magic wand' to recruit nurses says Harris .

I'm looking for the magic wand that would allow the health service make efficient use of the resources it has. Maybe that wand is actually more like a big stick that will break the stranglehold the unions currently have over working practices.

 

[Leper]

I agree. I wish he would stop pretending to be it though. He has no professional interest in sick people or the quality of medical or nursing care in the health service.

Hi Purple. Can you say when Liam Doran ever pretended to be the conscience of the HSE, the hospital system or the taxpayer? You seem to be harping away at him like he was some kind of devil. His job is to represent nurses, nothing else.

Leo said:-
"I wonder would they spend more time focusing on conditions and practices in order to try improve the working lives of their members rather than simply focus on increasing numbers."

Please read my posts. Nurses work extra time nearly every day of their career without any payment. Nurses were treated badly for years and now they are trying to make sure that the same will never happen again. Nurses are leaving our hospitals almost in droves by the day and if more nurses are not found we could shortly be without sufficient nurses in our hospitals. Why is this point being continually missed here?

I notice my questions on "perks" has been shelved here. Pity, because of the amounts of wrong information provided.

 

[Leper]

Can I ask if the nursing contracts were exactly the same in each hospital, how many grades of nurses there were and if they clocked in and out using a scanner/reader and their wages were calculated automatically?
Have thinks improved or is the HSE's payroll system still as shambolic as this?

I have never seen nursing contracts. Nurses don't clock in. Every hospital has a roster dictating the working days and hours of each nurse. I don't know of any ward nurse who does not work extra time on a daily basis outside of the roster hours. You don't think nurses just show up when they like?

 

[Leo]

Leo said:-
"I wonder would they spend more time focusing on conditions and practices in order to try improve the working lives of their members rather than simply focus on increasing numbers."

Please read my posts. Nurses work extra time nearly every day of their career without any payment. Nurses were treated badly for years and now they are trying to make sure that the same will never happen again.

Where did I say they didn't? But what's happening now and for years has very little to do with improving the working conditions of nurses and all to do with lining the union's pockets. Every attempt to review practices has been stonewalled unless there's more money in it.

 

[Leper]

Good Man ! there, Leo. A person shows up at a Garda Station and reports that he/she has been raped and the Gardaí tell 'em to go home and focus on cleaning up the bedroom which will improve his/her life.

 

[Purple]

I have never seen nursing contracts. Nurses don't clock in. Every hospital has a roster dictating the working days and hours of each nurse. I don't know of any ward nurse who does not work extra time on a daily basis outside of the roster hours. You don't think nurses just show up when they like?

OK, so you don't know if the payroll system is efficient. I have a friend who worked in payroll in Premark and then in the HSE. She said that the HSE is grossly inefficient in every aspect of how it is run from a payroll and contracts perspective and is decades behind the private sector and had hundreds of people who would be unnecessary if they have an efficient structure.

 

[Leper]

Now Purple, whether the payroll system in the HSE is efficient or not, has no bearing on how nurses are rostered or hired and some of their own time that nurses give freely nearly every day to the system. I reckon the failure to have PPARS installed was a huge mistake costing millions to the taxpayer. PPARS (computerised personal and payment system) failed because the consultant private sector firm cocked up the project from even before the start. You will have differing opinions here because the consulting firm was a well known one. But, no doubt about it, from where I sit, that firm is almost solely responsible for the non provision of PPARS. The project cost somewhere between €140M - €240M. I'm sure this delighted the Irish taxpayer.

Nurses Contracts:- As far as I know they have been the same for eons. I don't have daily contact with such written contracts. Contracts are a means to an end and if there is one thing nurses protect is their right to work as nurses. In the system it is called their "registration" and if a nurse loses this he/she may not work as a nurse. Therefore, they protect the registration. Please note that several nurses lose their registration every year too and when they do they are out of the job probably forever. This indicates the way nurses are answerable. Just a thought:- Have the contracts of consultants and hospital doctors been changed over the years? Sin Scéal eile.

The bottom line here is we need nurses because they are in short supply. They are being snapped up by hospitals abroad and in the pharmaceutical firms who give pretty better wages and conditions to nurses. I'd love to be facing a hospital consultant informing him we don't now have enough nurses for his patients. I can only imagine his reaction "Listen Lep. I'm the one who faces the war of litigation. Get me nurses and be quick about it."
Sounds simple but can anybody suggest something different that will work?

 

[mathepac]

I notice my questions on "perks" has [sic] been shelved here. Pity, because of the amounts of wrong information provided.

By no means. You've conceded the weekly hour off to cash non-existent cheques and you've conceded you don't see nurses contracts so you don't know the T&C's of their working arrangements which

have been the same for eons [sic]

Meal breaks form part of their duty hours.

One thing you will of course be aware of is the cosy arrangement whereby nurses in the 3 years leading up to retirement go back on rostered duties if they are allocated to a full-time day job. The reason for doing this is to increase pensionable earnings because rostered duty allowances count in calculating "final salaries". There is no business need for this. It simply increases the golden handshakes at the taxpayer's expense.

 

[Leper]

No Mathepac - get it straight - I have never heard of a weekly hour off to cash non-existent or even existent cheques. Therefore, how could I "concede" what you said. Believe me I do know the terms and conditions of nurses working arrangements. Meal breaks do not form part of their duty hours during day or night.

The retirement issue:- I don't see this as a big deal. Nurses pay into the pension fund. Furthermore, they continue to pay other pension levies because a previous government squandered the Public Service Fund and could not pay back the money it stole. I can speak for myself when I say my pension contributions and levies do not even come up to the amount of the pension I will get from the HSE.

OK Mathepac, for the sake of argument, let's say you are right:- Many, many nurses are due much back money payments for many years of unpaid meal breaks which you say are paid. Oh! Yes - and an hour payment each fortnight for going to the bank. I'm sure any nurse looking in here will be delighted.

Let's keep the discussion to the truth folks.

 

[Purple]

The retirement issue:- I don't see this as a big deal. Nurses pay into the pension fund. Furthermore, they continue to pay other pension levies because a previous government squandered the Public Service Fund and could not pay back the money it stole. I can speak for myself when I say my pension contributions and levies do not even come up to the amount of the pension I will get from the HSE.

The cost of funding state pensions is equal to the total of all taxes paid by state employees. When you look at it that way they pay no tax at all, they just fund their own pension, or they do pay tax and they don't fund their own pension. There are good arguments in favour of hiring more nurses and paying them more but you are on very dodgy ground when you bring pensions into the discussion.

My issue is with inefficient structures, duplication of activities, unnecessary activities, the paper based nature of so much activity, long decision making chains, demarcation (I was told by a nurse not to wipe up a small amount of a drink my child spilled on the ground in a ward in Tallaght hospital as that was someone else's job), restrictive work practices and general labour inflexibility within the health service. Pay levels are not the big issue. Get everything running efficiently and remove unnecessary staff after you remove unnecessary activity and there will be more than enough money for as many nurses as we want. We probably won't need any extra anyway if they are working within an efficient system. Of course the Unions won't let that happen as they will never countenance staff cuts and so the hypocrisy will continue and we will continue to have the wrong discussion.