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A MAJOR RECRUITMENT fair will see Irish medical professionals targeted by foreign hospitals this weekend – with a nurses’ union saying many will be attracted.
Heath Sector Jobs, a healthcare recruiter, is set to host its second jobs fair in Dublin’s RDS on Saturday. The event will see a mix of more than 55 Irish, UK, Australian and Singaporean exhibitors competing to recruit Irish and Irish based healthcare staff.
While there will be Irish hospitals searching for staff this weekend, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) says that any more losses to the Irish system would be a “another blow”.
March trolley watch figures from the INMO showed 475 people waiting for hospital beds – with more than 350 of those on trolleys, with 145 unfilled vacancies in emergency departments across Ireland.
While the recruitment moratorium in the health service has been lifted, then HSE confirmed earlier this year that it would recruit on a “one-in-one-out” model.
David Hughes of the INMO says that losing healthcare professionals is a “market reality”. He says that nurses moving to England stand to earn around €3,000 a year extra in a less pressurised environment with better educational opportunities.
Hughes says that the incentive package offered to attract Irish nurses home wasn’t good enough.
“If foreign hospitals recruit more nurses, it’s another blow to an already beleaguered health system.
“The incentive package was wholly inadequate and we told them that.
“There’s a market reality: you won’t get staff if you don’t pay as much as your competitors.”
The Department of Health says that its national recruitment plan continues apace and that it is not in a position to comment on the recruitment day this weekend.
However, they say that the nurse return scheme is working.
“To date approximately 420 applications have now been received and 83 have accepted job offers to date. Further interviews are scheduled for interested applicants. The scheme remains open and the recruitment campaign in the UK is continuing to fill nursing vacancies.”
Brid Johnson who is the Integrated Care Director with the NELFT NHS Foundation Trust in England will be in Dublin to recruit nurses and speech and language therapists. She says that the story of Irish health professionals leaving is all too common.
“Having to emigrate to seek job opportunities has become synonymous with healthcare jobs. 20 years ago, I had to leave Ireland as there was a strict number of places in nursing college in Ireland. I received my nursing training in Essex, England, and worked my way up through the ranks.”
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Wouldn’t blame them, they have an immense workload, pay is rotten, but I would imagine the workload is a major issue…I’ve worked in hospitals for seven years (not a medic).
Ye my sister moved to to London last year after graduating. She missed home after 3 or 4 months, thought about coming back, but then spoke to friends in Dublin hospitals that reminded her what an absolute state hospitals here are to work in. She didnt move for the money. It was the ability to improve herself through courses offered in London hospitals and working in environments that dont look like ‘war zones’ (her words). I will be very surprised if she ever comes home. She has made a life there now. It wouldnt matter what money they offered her. They need to overhaul the system. Nurses are humans, hard working ones, and there is a level of utter madness they will take. Irish hospitals are way beyond that level.
We’re now in a vicious circle. Nurse shortages in the big hospitals mean that wards are stretched to cover rotas and nurses feel forced to work overtime to keep wards with a basic level of cover. Given the tax system there is absolutely no financial incentive to work overtime as more than 50% of OT earnings are grabbed as tax, USC etc. Whilst you can do it for a while it’s now difficult to see an end to the problem and long hours become the norm. Thus the working environment here deteriorates and nurses are more likely to leave, making the problem worse.
We should probably really be closing beds because we can’t staff them but that won’t help the problems in the emergency departments. Most junior staff are young enough to be able to take their skills elsewhere and people are actively head hunted. I work as a doctor and I’ll wake up to emails from recruitment agencies in Australia or New Zealand a couple of days per week and the terms they offer are really attractive and I work in a shortage specialty.
Free market economy… They are able to sell their labour to the highest bidder.
Will they please take our train and tram drivers with them???
Interesting thought, maybe we could try paying other countries to take them.
It could prove to an economical solution if their replacements actually show up and do work.
Drew, wonder if Varadkar’s claim of constantly received job offers from abroad is true, seeing as he spend his working life so far as a political, rather than a doctor!
Irish nurses are among the best trained in the world, so is it any wonder that they are in demand around the world……good luck to them all.
But what about the amazing recovery? They’d be mad to leave
Maybe it just indicates that they have more of free choice in weighing up the benefits and choosing to seek work abroad, that very few are forced…
Yeah Guru, sky high rents, years before you can save up for a house, if you can find a house, stressful working conditions, I don’t know why they’d stay to be honest.
Like it or not, westerners who access health care services want to be treated by nurses and doctors from Ireland, UK, North America, Australia & NZ. We should simply start training tens of thousands of extra nurses and doctors. Demand for Irish nurses and doctors around the world is enormous. This approach will benefit everyone into the future.
The demand for nurses and doctors around the world regardless of their nationality is enormous.
Thomas, what she means is that people would rather avoid the pakistani or nigerian quack with dodgy credentials and who ends up removing the wrong organ.
No chance that they’d be recruiting for several layers of HSE middle management types I suppose!?!
Points for nurses skyrocketed in the last few years. 455 points for nursing in UCC. That’s outrageous. Hundreds of potentially great nurses blocked out of the profession by the excessively high points required. Make more spaces available, train more nurses.
What’s the point in training more if we aren’t paying them enough to keep them in the country when they graduate.
That would require thinking your plan through to conclusion Drew!
Marg, anyone with a reasonable level of intelligence should be able to achieve anywhere up to 500 points with just a little hard work.
Mercurial. To a point, but nurses don’t need the brains of a rocket scientist and there are plenty other professions where the 500+ pointers are needed more. It’s possible for many but it will take a lot of hard work to get 500+ points and those that do, how many will choose nursing when that many points will get them a lot more potentially lucrative course.
It has clearly been a long time since Mer sat the leaving cert.
Wow, and we are hiring doctors who literally can’t tell their ankles from their elbows;
http://www.thejournal.ie/medical-council-finding-against-doctor-2569865-Jan2016/
Im going, and I’m hoping to network with UK hospitals, if I get an attractive enough offer I’m away with bells on. Nursing in Ireland just doesn’t pay well enough for the responsibility and working conditions or unsociability of the job.
I have worked as front line medical staff for the HSE for the past 15 years. There is 1 fundamental problem with the HSE…They treat their staff with utter contemp…rather than valuable assets. HSE refuse to engage on a constructive level to resolve the issues. In their minds this is the minister of the day being told “what to do” by the unions. The HSE is split in 2…front line staffs valuable insight ignored…Management protecting the minister of the day. The HSE will continue to fail.
For Leo it’s see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil…
Then I feel extremely sorry for other European nurse as we get paid €425 for a 42 hour week.. So not worth it..it’s physically and emotionally draining and the worst of all is anyone who is not a nurse or who works with nurses will never understand or appreciate what we do. Zero job satisfaction, staff morale does not exist, absolutely no benefits..not even parking!!! Everyday at work I ask myself why did I punish myself by choosing this life. I can’t believe I went and paid for 4 years college to do this. I completely understand why people would leave.. I have to get out! I would never recommend to anyone to become a nurse.
Oh god! My daughter wants to be a nurse!
To me it just proves that the HSE is not fit for purpose
Pay isn’t the problem. It’s probably USC and other levels of tax coupled with cost of living..
Tell that to a nurse who after 4 years training and a BA in nursing. Who has being now been working 5 years and is still under €30k
A lot of people here seem to be making statements on wage, use, cost of living, hospital quality as to why people are leaving, all of which are true but a big player would be the weather I imagine? My girlfriend is a 4th year nursing student and would still leave Ireland even if she was offered 10k a week. Can’t say I blame her
It’s nice to see Irish Nurses are wanted,welcome and appreciated somewhere, as they sure are treated as second hand, second rate and an afterthought here in Ireland.
Doesn’t surprise me, it’s the same with doctor’s. No irish doctor’s stay, their out to the UK before the door swings shut.
Fact Check. Irish nurses the highest paid in Europe. This cannot be red tumbed as it is true..
Was the highest paid!! That’s for the history books. Irish nurses have invested in further edication with MSc, HDip, and extra post grad courses. They have a very poor work environment with overcrowding, bullying, intimidation and violemce and aggression on a daily basis. They are a broken profession with no light at the end of the tunnel. Then you have people telling them they are overpaid!!
Go go leave this country if you can!!
So you think they are leaving in search of lower wages???
hmmm must be a very poor career choice financially then, if our meagre pay for nurses is the best available.
Fact Check RORY2U ?
Did you not read the article? Nurses are leaving because the work load is horrendous with the chronic overcrowding and understaffing. This means not only is it soul destroying to try and do their work in these conditions, it is also dangerous to their patients, and to their own health. The more nurses who leave the worse it gets, so more nurses leave. Nurses are also offered better career advancement in other countries such as the UK, Australia, Canada etc.
I say this as a nurse with 20 years experience
You don’t need a Msc to become a nurse and as for the Hdip i am not sure where this applies.
They should be properly rewarded for the work they do .Some areas of nursing are very very difficult others are a doddle.The problem is the working conditions for nurses are not good in public hospitals and they have to be improved.What I don’t understand is why are the points so high with all this bad media around?.Why are students applying to study nursing? is to emigrate?.
So what if that is true (which I doubt) it has more to do with the long shifts, no breaks (not even to go to the toilet sometimes, I kid you not) and looking after far too many people. A sense that you can’t work to the standard you want to, nothing is improving and the government don’t care.
Nursing one of the safest careers in the world the world your oyster, we should be training them in their thousands ,and recoup training fee by means of a government funding loan when fully trained and those who stay in lreland for few years pay a rejuiced loan win win situation.
@Gerard Heery,
You are 100% right, but we never follow the smart option.
Interesting, those who mock with ‘they took ar jebs’ can actually point to this as a true example.
They did take the jobs of Irish healthcare staff – for a lower wage and worse conditions.
Meanwhile our next generation are now talking to their kids and parents on Skype and get home only for Christmas and funerals.
The loser in all this of course is the patient who now has to deal with people for whom English is not their first language, they may lack the required cultural sensitivity and their qualifications will generally not be on a par with Ireland trained staff.
Well done pixieheads.
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