Letterkenny General Hospital Does it again!

homer simpson

It's been revealed that a Nurse working at the sexual assault unit, was not a registered nurse! The thing about that is that if any of the people that had come to her for treatment and then sought to bring the offender to court, the evidence gathered by the nurse during treatment / tests will more than likely not be admissible. How this happens is beyond me. I mean the HSE were notified in 2009 yes 3 years ago about nurses that were taken off the register which included the nurse in letterkenny. It really is a disgrace 25 rape case are in jeopardy as a result of this, heads should roll IMO...


http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0512/breaking11.html

ednwireland

could someone explain what the HSE actually do ?

danniemcq

ednwireland wrote: »

could someone explain what the HSE actually do ?

apart from nothing?

paulmclaughlin

spend money?

Mint Sauce

paulmclaughlin wrote: »

spend waste money?

Fixed that for ya.

paulmclaughlin

irish-stew wrote: »

Fixed that for ya.

ta

implausible

As far as I can gather, the nurse hadn't renewed her registration and the hospital never picked this up. It doesn't mean she wasn't qualified or suitable to treat sexual assault victims but that her registration was out of date and therefore evidence gathered by her could be compromised. It's a loophole that could be exploited by a defendant.

However, to hear some of the news bulletins today, you'd think there was an unqualified random person wandering around working in the unit.:rolleyes:

Senna

Heard on the radio that her not being registered wont automatically mean the case will get thrown out as there is no stipulation in law that the nurse must be registered. Hopefully the HSE will get lucky with this blunder and it wont effect any cases.

muffler

It smacks of someone getting a job "through the back door"

implausible

muffler wrote: »

It smacks of someone getting a job "through the back door"

It smacks of someone not renewing their registration or forgetting to. But the HSE should keep on top of automatically checking that all staff are up to date with their registration.

retalivity

I know a few people working in there, and although they have tried (with minimal success) to clean it up, the incompetence in the place is supposed to be astounding.
From the top down, the whole way. And money just gets thrown at everything to try and fix it.

kiddums

I've spoken to smoeone who says that nurses are ment be keep themselves up to date with this, its not the HSE responsibility.

That said I think that when the HSE were told of this they should have immediatly informed the correct department and a superior should have mentioned it to the nurse. Perhaps she genuinely forgot about it.

Why did it need to "filter down" through the HSE? Do they not have phones, or email, or the ability to speak to each other directly?

I don't balme the nurses for anything wrong in the hospital. Its the management, some of the doctors and the HSE that are the problem. The nurses are the front line.
If I ever need to go to the hospital I want the nurses making decisions not doctors. Nurses know the real world stuff, doctors know the stuff from books.

cosanostra

The Nurse never paid her annual subscription fee to An Bord Altranais and that means she was de-registered! It seems a bit of a joke that Nurses working for the HSE don't have there fees paid out of there wages i can understand in the case of private hospitals but its not as if they need to do an exam its just like a union membership

Vinegar Hill

cosanostra wrote: »

The Nurse never paid her annual subscription fee to An Bord Altranais and that means she was de-registered! It seems a bit of a joke that Nurses working for the HSE don't have there fees paid out of there wages i can understand in the case of private hospitals but its not as if they need to do an exam its just like a union membership

That is not entirely true. A registered nurse has continuing education requirements that he/she must achieve in order to re-register. If these CPDs are not met then they can not re-register. Yes there is a fee involved in the re-registration but the CPD requirement is there to insure that professional staff are current on trends and developments in medicine. Medicine continually evolves and changes and therefore the CPD requirement.

That said, the HSE or in this case, a Nursing Supervisor should be in place to verify that all nursing staff have re-registered when needed. How hard is it to maintain some sort of database or spreadsheet to have ready access to this sort of information.