INO demands improved conditions to alleviate nurse shortage
The Irish Nurses Organisation has demanded better pay and improved training in an effort to alleviate a shortage of intensive care nurses throughout the country.
The call was issued in response to a report into the death of Limerick toddler Róisín Ruddle in July 2003, a day after her heart operation was cancelled due to a shortage of paediatric intensive care nurses.
The report criticised Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin for failing to tackle the shortage of specially trained nurses.
Speaking about the matter today, INO general secretary Liam Doran said better incentives were needed to attract nurses into the profession.
"We need to improve the pay and conditions of nurses. We need to pay specialist trained nurses more and we also need to build twinning arrangements with England so that we can train more intensive care, coronary care and A&E nurses,” he said.
"If we don't do both of those things immediately, there will be further cancellation of services and the potential for more tragedies."
