FF/FG/Green Government - Part 3

Good article on it here. Same factors repeated.

Why we emigrated: Irish healthcare professionals on what pushed them to leave (thejournal.ie)

Becca (28) studied general nursing in Tralee and now lives in Perth.

“There’s no such thing as a patient ratio in Ireland. I used to have eight patients on a day shift in a private cardiac unit,” she explains. “In Australia, it’s such a massive contrast - it’s strictly four patients to one nurse in the public hospitals.” 

Becca could have had 12 patients to herself on a night shift when she was working in Ireland. “It’s so dangerous. Would you be happy for one of your grandparents to be looked after by someone that has 11 other patients? It’s not safe for the patients and it’s not safe for the nurses,” she says.

Becca explains that any mistakes made in the workplace almost always come down to poor fatigue management and too much of a patient workload. Her workload in Australia is manageable compared to Ireland.

Maud (27) from Cork also studied in Tralee and worked in two different hospitals in Cork once she qualified. In Australia, she now works in home care for palliative patients. Maud echoes Becca’s comments about hospital work in Australia, noting a much lower patient load. 

“I had a nice run while working in Ireland because I was in a private elective ward. You’d know what’s coming in the door but training was a different story. I trained in a public hospital and there were staff shortages, long hours, and some days you were expected to be a staff member despite being on training, so it was sink or swim.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever go back to hospitals in Ireland. Pay would need to change, [plus] better working conditions, higher staff levels, lower patient to nurse ratio.”

Aoife (31) from Clare, studied in Castlebar and qualified in 2013. “I was paid €5.35 an hour during my training,” She describes doing her nursing degree in Ireland as “traumatic.”

“We were treated so badly; the senior staff were quite nasty.”

She tried to get a job immediately but they were paying minimum wage. “I was earning more working in a bar,” she says. Aoife then worked in a hospital in Liverpool for four years. “The pay still wasn’t good but you’re treated better there than you are at home. The people were much nicer, they were all about helping the new nurses.

“There’s no respect at all [in Ireland]. Nurses don’t have respect for other nurses, the managers don’t have respect for the nurses. The doctors certainly don’t have respect for the nurses, [particularly] doctors aged 40 and over. I was in a theatre all day with one surgeon and I worked every day with him for a year and he didn’t know my name.

“If I moved home to Ireland, I would never work in a hospital again. The culture in a hospital has to change, it’s terrible.”