Several areas of the health service face a shortage of nurses and there is no contingency plan to deal with the problem, a union leader said yesterday.Ms Mary Durkin, president of SIPTU's national nursing council, said large numbers of nurses were reducing their working hours or leaving the health service because of stress.
The changeover from diploma to degree courses, introduced into the profession last September, meant there would be no graduates to the profession in 2005, yet nothing had been done to address the shortfall that would ensue.
Ms Durkin was responding to comments by the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, at yesterday's SIPTU national nursing convention in Dublin.
Mr Martin said that as a result of "unprecedented levels of investment" in the health service since 1997, there had been an overall increase in staffing numbers of nearly 30,000, almost 7,000 of whom were nurses.
The new degree programme was a profound development, he said, but the Government's investment in nursing education had not begun there. Since 1998, it had steadily increased the number of training places available, from 968 that year to 1,640 in 2002.
This was an "all-time record" and an increase of almost 70 per cent in that four-year period, he told delegates.
Ms Durkin, however, claimed the increase in staffing outlined by the Minister was "not visible on the ground".
She was particularly concerned about staffing levels in three areas: care of older people, general medical and surgical wards, and A&E departments.
Nursing homes were "appallingly staffed", she said.
