Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHS
Catherine Rotte-Murray
Co. Waterford Ireland
Rural-based Public Health Nurse - children birth - five years, maternal health, adults over 65, adults under 65 with chronic health needs living at home.
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Comments (3)
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Comment on: Nursin' USA - Why I love nursing in the UK
I think we in Ireland could match 4 out of the 5 favourite things you like about UK nursing - all except the free universal healthcare. Ireland is unique in Europe in perpetrating a divisive two-tier health system whereby everyone pays health levies deducted at source as a tax and yet over half the population takes out private health insurance to enable them to queue jump for elective surgery. It is a disgraceful anomaly and I refuse to have it on principle even though the last time I was sick I spent 33 hours on a trolley in A&E and a side-ward. I am a public health nurse where the whole ethos is care based on need rather than ability to pay. (I am also a member of the Irish Labour Party who subscribe to universal health care, public not private, based on need.) As well as the divisive system I described, the free care is excellent for those who meet the criteria for a Medical Card - this gives free public care from GP to hospital to dental and optical. Sadly you can be excluded by working in a low -paid job as the ceiling is very low- below the minimum wage so it only suits social welfare recipients or part-timers. Opposition parties are full of ideas for change to universal care, only the right wing govt. believes in the market finding its level - our health minister famously said some years ago we were closer to Boston than Berlin - as if it was a proud boast! It might be in any other way than healthcare access! Glad that the US has seen sense at last - I cannot accept that healthcare is not a basic human right.
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Comment on: All-graduate nursing debate hots up as minister accuses detractors of sexism
Ireland moved to a full degree programme in the past 5-6 years after a transition Diploma programme. I am appalled that there are those who would knock the idea of nursing becoming a degree level profession and as for suggesting that those more academic should go for medicine that is merely insulting those nurses who strive to be both academic and caring. These are not mutually exclusive attributes. I state this from my position as a nurse who trained in the 70s under the apprenticeship system in 3 years. I went to university in my 40s to get a higher diploma in public health nursing and thoroughly enjoyed the academic challenge - but haven't seen a divide in Ireland between the old-style trained nurses and the degree nurses. Many older trained nurses go on to do the degree from choice and that's fine but our union ensured that there wouldn't be a two-tier level of nurse - all nurses get equal pay and conditions and older trained nurses aren't penalised for not having degrees as the option wasn't there. Degrees give more respect from other professions in healthcare. We have a stronger negotiating position when we seek parity with allied health professionals like physiotherapists and occupational therapists who might claim nurses don't have degrees so don't deserve pay parity.(We haven't achieved parity yet but we are still trying to get nurses' pay improved.) We do not see nurses as failed doctors and we do not want to be doctors but we want respect and if we don't get it from within the profession as seems the case from some of the comments here what chance have we - is nursing so demoralised in the UK? I hope not - we have a long tradition of collaboration between our two countries with many Irish nurses training in the UK in the past. Irish nursing has progressed hugely in the past decade with many pursuing postgraduate studies (I could access my H.Dip in PHN without having a primary degree such is the assessment system here) and I have the option of doing a Masters' anytime should I wish, and many colleagues have done so, and many also have PhDs in Nursing. That has increased nursing's status among other academics and medical/healthcare professional colleagues. That there are few jobs for graduating nurses is an economic factor due to a bloatedly bureauratic health service executive that has had a recruitment freeze in place for the past two years with few derogations - so nursing is suffering from that but not from the fact that nursing is a degree-level profession. Nurses are not "too posh to wash" who have degrees; they may take longer to develop skills with the patients and there is a skill mix we didn't have with HCAs. So don't stereotype unfairly - nursing has come a long way from the drudgery that it was and if we want respect we must have pride and self-respect in our well-educated caring nurses. Ireland had a steep learning curve to climb with the transition and I am sure it will be equally successful in the UK, just don't train nurses for export like we are currently doing - that's our loss and other countries' gain.
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Comment on: GPs to earn £5.25 per swine flu jab
I have to laugh when I read the responses to the GPs getting paid £5.25 per vaccine - in Ireland this week it has been an issue in the media that the Irish GPs will probably be paid a princely €38.95 (£35.86 at today's rate) for each flu jab. That is the amount payable for the seasonal flu jab,vs the UK payment of £7.51 (€8.15 by today's rate). We are all bewildered at the rates paid to GPs here for flu and other vaccines as we public health nurses will be part of teams designated to deliver the H1N1 vaccines in Mass Vaccination Clinics under protocols, but with no additional resources to cover our normal workload. This is due to the government and the HSE (Health Service Executive - comparable to the NHS in remit) recruitment embargo, ongoing for the past two years. We are losing posts across the board and it is only serving to undermine nursing as management seek to replace nurses with lower nursing grades and HCAs in some workplace settings. We are not opposed to skill mix, indeed we welcome it but not as an economic measure to save money at the expense of nurses. I thought you might like another perspective on nursing from another jurisdiction. Make you appreciate what we would love to have - a real NHS. Ours is based on an inequitable two-tier system where money speaks - if you have private health insurance you can queue-jump and have elective procedures done next week - the tragedy is that if you haven't then you wait - for scans, consultant appointments, and surgery/procedures. This has led to deaths in the past - acknowledged by our government in retrospect. Ireland is unique in Europe in having this two-tier system - we are inexorably moving towards an American-style system of healthcare provision. Our Minister for Health famously said some years ago we are spiritually closer to Boston than Berlin - how we'd relish the reverse in healthcare! (To declare my bias - I am an active member of the Irish Nurses Organisation (Nurses' Trade Union) and a member of the Irish Labour Party).
