Threatened nurses strike
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KalEl
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Benchmarking is purely pay related.
Ahem....Let me put a lot of people straight on this.
In the real world (ie, the non-benchmarked private sector), it's quite common for Team Leaders/Supervisors earning less (sometimes substantially less) than their subordinates. This is down to the skills that each individual has, and the contract deal that they struck on gaining employment with their employer.
It's unfair because at times you can see the overpaid person not able to match the underling. On the other hand, regular performance related reviews are in place to rectify this....not a blanket payrise for all the 'underpaid' as that is insane.
You do your job, if you're good, you keep it and get a modest cost of living rise (if lucky): if you're great, you get a payrise/promotion and if you're crap, you're demoted/warned/fired.
Why is it anathema to mention this in regard to the nurses ???? Surely they are in a profession where they should be under more scrutiny than an IT monkey !!?
Maybe its late, but I have no idea what point you are trying to make! The nurses' example under discussion here refers to care assistants who have basically a school leaver's qualification, and little if any specialist experience, reporting to qualified nurses (we've been over the degree bit!) ...but the care assistants earn more. What has that to do with your example of "IT monkeys in the real-world of the private sector"? I cannot understand your final paragraph either! Sorry.
K
KalEl
Guest
Hmmm, constructive I think not!
I agree with Oops, even if subordinates earning more than their bosses is quite common (which I don't believe!) does that make it right? No, it's ridiculous.
how many care assistants actually get paid more than a nurse? If it was so widespread ( and Mary Harney stated that it was something like 50 odd cases) then why has no nurse applied for this post - reduced responsibility for more money - money for jam?Crazy notion???
Fact is more like, this care assistants getting paid more is not at all widespread and is simply another "woe is me" spin story.
Fact is more like, this care assistants getting paid more is not at all widespread and is simply another "woe is me" spin story.
Possibly because the HSE have led by example in ignoring a whole series of Labour Court decisions - They can't cherrypick and then be surprised when the nurses do the same.
This can't be true, since SIPTU are putting a claim in for a 35 hour week along with pay claims to the benchmarking body.
SIPTU members are happy to do their job while they refer their claims to independant arbitration. I have to ask why the INO can't do this?
To be fair and I am still think the nurses argument is flawed, I personally know two people who recently got nursing degrees but aren't using them because they can earn more as care staff. I think it just shows what a flawed concept 'benchmarking' was. The whole system is a joke.
K
KalEl
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http://www.finance.gov.ie/ViewDoc.asp?DocId=-1&CatID=31&m=c
Because nurses have been listening to promises about a 35 hour week for 27 years. Nobody is saying do it right now...but the HSE need to give a concrete timescale for its implementation, not vague or wooly "we'll look at it stuff". Do that and the industrial action would cease and the nurses would return to benchmarking over the 10.6% pay rise and the allowance for Dublin nurses (which I don't agree with)
K
KalEl
Guest
I asked a nurse friend of mine about this...the consensus is that if the INO were run solely by women this industrial action wouldn't be happening. It's militant men that are driving it, specifically the psychiatric nurses (of which Liam Doran was/is one) She has no problem with this
Life and death decisions are generally team decisions, not the province of one person - even if they are a doctor. Whether to continue with treatment, or to continue with resusitation, are *team* decisions.
If I may enter a quote regarding what is called the "emotional labour" of nurses:
"An oncology ward is a battlefield, and there are definite hierarchies of command. The patients, they're the ones doing the tour of duty. the doctors breeze in and out like conquering heroes, but they need to read your child's chart to remember where they've left off from the previous visit. It is the nurses who are the seasoned sergeants - the ones who are there when your baby is shaking with such a heigh fever she needs to be bathed in ice, the ones who can teach you how to flush a central venous catheter, or suggest which patient floor kitchens might still have Popsicles left to be stolen, or tell you which dry cleaners know how to remove the stains of blood and chemotherapies from clothing. The nurses know the name of your daughter's stuffed walrus and show her how to make tissue paper flowers to twine around her IV stand. The doctors may be mapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable."
Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper,Hodder, p227
To be honest, the INO have very little to gain out of this, since there is no way that the nursing staff gan get a payrise outside of benchmarking.
I think what could be going on here is that Liam Doran is trying to make some noise, remember the INO are effectively redundant since walking out on bench marking.
Mr. Doran needs to be seen to be fighting for something... And pre election is the "right" time. Why now, why not a year ago have this dispute if as the staff stricking claim as it apparently has been an issue for "27 year" - this is news to me (an ex nurse)...
I think what could be going on here is that Liam Doran is trying to make some noise, remember the INO are effectively redundant since walking out on bench marking.
Mr. Doran needs to be seen to be fighting for something... And pre election is the "right" time. Why now, why not a year ago have this dispute if as the staff stricking claim as it apparently has been an issue for "27 year" - this is news to me (an ex nurse)...
Gordanus - lovely but you are painting the picture of a Florence Nightiefinder helpful vocation holder, and these days some nurses could shoot you for that discription! preferring their correct title of Clinical Nurse Specialist Grade 1-100
.
To the nurses out there - who is the person who is tasked with getting lab results? and are they actually doing this now that the nurses are not?
. To the nurses out there - who is the person who is tasked with getting lab results? and are they actually doing this now that the nurses are not?
preferring their correct title of Clinical Nurse Specialist Grade 1-100
There's only ONE grade of CNS.
Nurses have been looking for ward clerks for years.
I couldn't believe that nurses work 39 hours here as it was 35 in the UK since donkey's years.........at least since 1988 when I started nursing in the UK. (I'm an ex-nurse which is why I still retain an interest)
Our Public Health Nurse dropped by yesterday checking on our nipper. She was saying that as an INO member she was not allowed to take calls. So the doorman/receptionist at the health centre would take the messages, pass them on and then she would call the parents back on her mobile (wasn't sure if she meant work or private one). She said that she could not really ignore such calls and had to do her job. So (a) the action obviously is designed to impact patients/clients and (b) at least some nurses are circumventing the union directives. She was very dubious about the action yielding anything for them and seemed a bit iffy about the whole thing anyway although we didn't have time to chat about it.
Why are the people who work in the health service in no way to blame for the flaws in that service? Why is it not OK to criticise nurses? I have three children, all of whom have been sick from time to time. Their illnesses have varied from life threatening to relatively minor so their hospital stays have varied. My experience of nurses in wards and outpatient clinics has varied from extremely professional, friendly and efficient to obnoxious, incompetent and lazy. I have had to listen to a nurse use obscene language as she went on a fifteen minute diatribe about an Indian consultant (who in our experience was excellent) because she insisted that the nurse washed her hands before she gloved up to remove a cannula from our child.
I have listened as three nurses had a long and animated discussion about oral sex at the desk in a children’s ward in Tallaght hospital. This went on for ten minutes while I waited for help to fix a dressing on my post-op eighteen-month-old son. I was waiting because they were too busy to help him. By far the most compassionate nurses I have met are non-nationals so I have no problem with them filling as many posts as they like in our health system.
That said, most of the nurses I have met have been competent but rarely have they stood out as being compassionate or ultra efficient. I have found an undercurrent of cynicism and a culture of making sure that they don’t do any more than the minimum that they can get away with.
The scribblings of a woman with no qualifications beyond creative writing who produces supermarket novels is hardly a solid reference. The bottom line is that doctors make the life and death decisions, all of them. Nurses don’t. You are factually wrong. The nurses may give out about the doctor later as they have a cuppa at the nurse’s station and she continues on her 60+ hour week but that’s about the extent of their input.
I am not saying that there is no emotional impact on nurses, I fully accept that there is and that they carry the majority of that burden. To watch children dying a slow death and see the hope drain out of their parents eyes or see old people loosing their dignity before dying must be harrowing and is a huge burden to bare but it is factually incorrect to say that nurses are part of the clinical decision making process in life and death situations. That’s why doctors study harder and longer and get paid more.