No work contract

FionnK86

I'm mates with a nurse and she hasn't been offered a contract and she's working in a care home for the last month.

She was told she would get a year contract and in her last chat was told 6 months. The staff are also constantly making mistakes with medication which she notices but doesn't raise it with management. She doesn't want to come across as pushy.

Should she chase up this contract?

Tenigate

FionnK86 wrote: »

I'm mates with a nurse and she hasn't been offered a contract and she's working in a care home for the last month.

She was told she would get a year contract and in her last chat was told 6 months. The staff are also constantly making mistakes with medication which she notices but doesn't raise it with management. She doesn't want to come across as pushy.

Should she chase up this contract?

Bit in bold.. i mean, seriously. What's that got to do with her contract!

The employee is entitled to receive a written contract. see http://employmentrightsireland.com/category/the-employment-contract/

The fact that she's been there 6 months without receiving one leaves the employer wide open to a lawsuit, for example if your friend claimed it was agreed she'd get 28 days annual leave - the employer could not prove otherwise if he hadn't provided a written contract.

Practically, however, it doesn't make a huge difference. Your friend is working there, presumably there is no immediate threat to her job security. Even if there was, employees don't have a huge amount of rights within the first 2 years.

It's up to her whether she wants to ask for a copy of her contract of employment. As for should she chase it up - it's up to her.

CruelCoin

FionnK86 wrote: »

She was told she would get a year contract and in her last chat was told 6 months. The staff are also constantly making mistakes with medication which she notices but doesn't raise it with management. She doesn't want to come across as pushy.

Wow.

People are getting the wrong meds and she doesn't want to rock the boat?
I'll take the card hit for this, but i hope she doesn't get a contract.

Tenigate

CruelCoin wrote: »

People are getting the wrong meds and she doesn't want to rock the boat?
I'll take the card hit for this, but i hope she doesn't get a contract.

I don't work in healthcare, but I realise it's going the way of most industries...

Staff are given low pay, impossible workloads, controls only exist in documents, and it's management's job to tell senior management that everything is working exactly as it should. When things go really wrong, if they can't contain it or blame someone else, maybe a head will roll.

I met a pharmacist who left a large (the largest) retailer of pharmaceuticals in the US. When a client came in with a prescription, he had 5 minutes to serve them. The system could throw up 5 or 6 contraindications with no indication whether it was possible and harmless, or definite and fatal. The control was, in this 5 minutes, he would initial each of the boxes next to each contraindication, and hope he was able to manually catch the dangerous cases.

Sorry for going OT, but it's the reason why I wouldn't rock the boat on this one. Irish healthcare is full of foreign workers - some diamonds, granted, but many with questionable credentials.

If you want to keep your job, you keep your mouth shut and cover your back.

Xterminator

Hi OP

it appears to me your nurse friend is not acting in accordance with the NMBI practices. in particular

Principle 3: quality of practice
You must report any safety concerns you have about the health care environment and help to find solutions through appropriate lines of authority (such as your manager, employer or relevant regulatory body)

i think your friend needs to communicate concerns in writing to her superiors, and see what the response is. This can be done gently without being seen as rocking the boat. If she has already approached mgmt about this, she should try to retain dates times and a record of what was said, as far as possible.

If concerns are not acted upon, she is morally obliged to make a protected disclosure;

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/enforcement_and_redress/protection_for_whistleblowers.html
http://www.morganmcmanus.com/index.php/2017/04/12/whistleblowers-act-2014-employee-perspective/

If you want to keep your job, you keep your mouth shut and cover your back.

this is exactly the attitude that allows scandals such as the recent nursing home neglect, and institutional child abuse take place. It seems some people have not yet learned the the complicit silence allows these abuses take place. Shame on you for suggesting it.

Lux23

She can report these things to HIQA on the QT. If more people did abuse wouldn't happen as much.

Tenigate

Xterminator wrote: »

this is exactly the attitude that allows scandals such as the recent nursing home neglect, and institutional child abuse take place. It seems some people have not yet learned the the complicit silence allows these abuses take place. Shame on you for suggesting it.

Shame on you for conflating neglect and abuse to make your point.

Xterminator

im sure the residents of the nursing homes who were neglected understood the employees were only shutting their mouths covering their own backs.

This allowed the situation to continue, and peoples lives put at risk due to unsafe practices. as appears to be the case in the OP's situation. but perhaps a work contract is more important - to some people anyway.

Neglect is a form of abuse, and qualified healthcare professionals have an obligation under their code of practise to report it.