Ratio of administrators to consultants in the HSE is 6.2 to 1

What's the working year for a nurse? Is it bank holidays plus 28 days or do they get more holidays than that?
If it is then the average nurse takes 11 sick days a year.
Doctors spend as much time around sick people. How come they have a fifth of the sick days?
We have 2.7 doctors per 1000 people. The OECD average is 3.3 per 1000. With our young population and being a developed country that seems reasonable.
We have 12.4 nurses per 1000 people. The OECD average is 9.1 per 1000. How come we have a shortage of nurses? Could it be that we have enough nurses but we aren't using them properly?

Why is the fact that we have the second highest spend per head in the OECD but the poorest outcomes not the only discussion being had about the healthcare sector? Why does the media concentrate on hard luck human interest stories and not this fact or those in Brendan's link?

The public debate should be;
We have enough nurses.
We probably have enough doctors.
We spend more than enough on health.
Do whatever is necessary to sort it out and run the public health service for the benefit of the public. Anyone who stands in the way of reform, be the doctors or nurses or union reps or local politicians should be treated like criminals.
 
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Not sure who is right between Mathepac and Purple, but my takeaway from the figures is that you can't pin the issues in the health service on the lack of money going into it...
 
To try and establish how nurses are deployed, I accessed the "Grade List for use in Health Service Personnel Census (HSPC) by Category: 2017" from HSE Corporate, one of the 5 (or is it now 6 HSEs?) we have had foisted on us.

This is what I found:

There are 17 Grade Groups within "Nursing" as follows:
  1. Advanced Nurse/ Midwife Practitioner
  2. Clinical Nurse/ Midwife Manager
  3. Clinical Nurse/ Midwife Specialist
  4. Director Nursing/Midwifery, Assistant
  5. Director of Nursing/Midwifery
  6. Nursing Bank
  7. Nursing Education/Clinical
  8. Nursing/Midwifery Other (Corporate)
  9. Other Nursing/ Midwifery
  10. Post-registration Nurse Students
  11. Pre-registration Nurse Students
  12. Pre-registration Nursing/ Midwifery
  13. Public Health Nursing
  14. Staff Midwives
  15. Staff Nurse [Intellectual Disability]
  16. Staff Nurse [Psychiatric]
  17. Staff Nurses [General/ Children's]
I have no idea what the differences are in detail but I could probably make an educated guess at most of them. The bad news is that within one single Grade Group, 2 above, the are 14 different Grades of CN/MM as follows:-

2. Clinical Nurse / Midwife Manager
  1. Clinical Midwife Manger 1
  2. Clinical Midwife Manger 2
  3. Clinical Midwife Manger 3
  4. Clinical Nurse Manager 1
  5. Clinical Nurse Manager 1 (Mental Health)
  6. Clinical Nurse Manager 1 - Theatre
  7. Clinical Nurse Manager 2
  8. Clinical Nurse Manager 2 (Mental Health)
  9. Clinical Nurse Manager 2 - Night
  10. Clinical Nurse Manager 2 - Theatre
  11. Clinical Nurse Manager 3
  12. Clinical Nurse Manager 3 (Mental Health)
  13. Clinical Nurse Manager 3 - Night
  14. Clinical Nurse Manager 3 - Theatre
There are about 120 different grades in Nursing so if I have a nurse in one of those grades out sick or on holiday do I need to get someone to "act up" with an allowance or do I have to hire in an agency "Clinical Nurse Manager 3 (Mental Health)" that I can only employ on days or what? No wonder there are so many admins. My head hurts just thinking about it.
 
Purple at last you said politicians well done. If the pressure is put on Politicians they know there Fortunes will wax and wane if they do not sort it .Then it will be Squeaky Bum Time.They need to fear The purples of this country more than the fear the Liam
The Politicians of this Country would not sleep at night if they though the Centre was going to turn on them. (Centre Stands For Inertia.) Like the Mortgage Issue You would be Suprised at the people who would want to represent the new centre

Ps post no 12 Purple said
Id love to have you on the Jury if I was in Court
And I would make sure you were put away for your own protection.
 
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Wasn't the complexity of the grades and payscales part of the problem with the PPARS system that cost millions.
 
That was a symptom of a much more fundamental problem; a weak management that allowed the grading system to be implemented and run by the unions for their members' benefit rather than patients or clients.
 

Mathepac is right and in a relatively short time there will be no HSE hospitals in Ireland. Ask anybody working in the hospital system. The service has been run down for years and shorter than any of us believe, it is only a matter of time before the hospital service is privatised. The private health insurance people will be running our hospitals along with investors. Will the new system work? I don't have a crystal ball but I fear for what is ahead. Even if you have private health insurance hospitalisation might not be available instantly. If you haven't got private health insurance, God help you and you'll be wasting your time screaming for hospital admittance. They won't want to know you, you know!

One thing is certain when privatisation occurs there won't be gardaí turning up at Accident and Emergency with drunken people looking for nothing other than fight. There won't be people showing up in A & E with minor ailments either. The ambulance service will not be collecting people other than those who are really ill (rent a grandmother will cease). Hospital Patients will be discharged much faster than at present. In view of what the NHS in the UK has to offer we won't be keeping good quality nurses in private Irish hospitals either. Many forget that Liam Doran is representing nurses in private hospitals too.

Great! says you, we'll have a hospital system that works. (grinning to himself he continues to write . . . ) the private hospital system in Ireland also has difficulty in keeping nurses . . . despite their expensive newspaper features advising to the contrary . . . ever ask yourself how many consultants working in private hospitals also have fulltime contracts with the HSE hospital system?

. . . be careful what you wish for . . . you'll get it shortly . . .
 
Leper said:
. . . be careful what you wish for . . . you'll get it shortly . . .
Click to expand...
I want a well run and efficient publicly funded healthcare system which puts the interests of the public ahead of the interests of the people employed to deliver it. You needn't worry, the two faced, lying and duplicitous Unions, the incompetent (and unionised) Management and the parish-pump politicians who want a hospital in every town in Ireland will ensure the current shambles lumbers on and people keep tying on trolleys.
I see Liam is getting the Nurses out on strike again. They should be ashamed of themselves.
 
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odyssey06 said:
I wonder if Liam Doran has ever come up with a cost neutral improvement to the health service?
Click to expand...
It has no interest in improving the health service. He is interested in getting as much money as possible for as little work as possible for his members. If he is seeking to improve the health service he's not doing his job. If he is doing his job he is more likely than not damaging the health service and the country as a whole. The same can be said for all Unions and Union leaders.
 
Purple said:
We have 12.4 nurses per 1000 people. The OECD average is 9.1 per 1000. How come we have a shortage of nurses? Could it be that we have enough nurses but we aren't using them properly?
Click to expand...

Yeah, but look who have less nurses per per capita than us. I mean, would we really want to compare ourselves to this shambolic lot?

  • Netherlands
  • Austria
  • Sweden
  • New Zealand
  • Canada
  • France

Joking aside, France is often touted as having an exceptional healthcare system. On a per capita basis we have 30% more nurses!!!

End of Page 2 .... https://www.oecd.org/ireland/Health-at-a-Glance-2015-Key-Findings-IRELAND.pdf

Liam Doran should be ashamed of himself. Cutting sick leave alone would make a massive difference.
 

I agree that he has no interest... but disagree that it's part of his job. He's constantly bleating about not just the pay but the conditions and stress etc etc of his members working in these hospitals. I am sure his members would want him to help tackle those issues too. Yet he never seems to come up with a positive cost-neutral suggestion to improve their day to day working conditions and remove stress and friction ... every problem comes to him with the same solution, a bigger pork barrel.
 
An efficient health system would mean the same or fewer nurses and a better organised and run service would mean less stress and so more people would be willing to work there. That would mean less pressure for pay increases. Liam is running a business. His business is called the INMO. It makes money by getting members to pay a membership. It runs directly against his interests to have a efficient and well run healthcare system which is patient focused.
The same is true for all Unions which feed off the public teat.
 
If you give politicians one Euro they want to spend two euro.All politics is local.We have a minister in power at present who nearly brought down the Government he got his way in the end if we had more money to throw around he would have got more.Who are we going to blame Liam. Politicians set bad example what do you expect.
 
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Firefly said:
Liam Doran should be ashamed of himself. Cutting sick leave alone would make a massive difference.
Click to expand...
The numbers I posted relate to absenteeism, as only 87% is certified sick-leave. This may seem a minor point but the HSEs have a target of 100% certified sick leave. just making progress towards this goal alone could save millions as they get paid for not working plus the potential cost of an agency replacement.
 
Just as paper doesn't refuse ink doctors don't refuse money so if a nurse goes to their GP and looks for a sick cert they are going to get one, whether they need it or not. The real question is why nurses take so much sick leave. It doesn't matter whether it's certified or not. The notion that all certified sick leave is legitimate is nonsense. Doctors don't want to lose customers and even if they are completely ethical about giving out certs they still base their diagnosis on what the patient tells then. It isn't Star Trek, they don't have a Tricorder.

Even if there was no messing the in-built inefficiency and duplication within the system would still mean there would be gross inefficiency and waste.
 
True that not all certified sick leave is legit, but, the process of forcing someone to pay for and attend a GP surgery does act as a deterrent to some though.
 
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