HSE accused of 'poaching' staff for new Lourdes A&E

A recruitment drive by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to attract medical and administrative personnel from throughout the north-east to staff its new emergency department and medical assessment unit at Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda will result in Our Lady's Hospital in Navan losing staff who will not be replaced, it was claimed this week. The HSE Dublin North-East has called for expressions of interest from staff for transfer to Our Lady of Lourdes and to fill posts available, including radiographers, senior social worker, HCAs, community liaison nurse, clinical facilitator, medical laboratory scientist, senior cardiac technician, clerical officers, senior physiotherapist, respiratory clinical nurse specialist, registered general nurses and dual qualified registered children's nurses with experience in emergency department nursing. In a document seen by the Meath Chronicle, the HSE says that "it is an exciting and challenging time to come and work with us. We are looking for suitably qualified motivated and enthusiastic individuals to join our team". It states that the Lourdes provides regional trauma, obstetric and paediatric services to the Louth-Meath region. The emergency department is a "very busy unit", currently treating 45,000 attendances per annum. The HSE says the new department has dedicated paediatric and adult treatment waiting areas. There was also an integrated x-ray unit with digital x-ray imaging. Nurse practitioners provided a minor injuries service. However, Tony Fitzpatrick, industrial relations officer of the Irish Nurses' and Midwives' Organisation (INMO), said his orgabnisation had written to the HSE complaining about the circulation of the document inviting transfers to the Lourdes. He said that the principles of the deployment of staff had not been agreed and, as part of their ongoing action at the moment, they would not be co-operating with the HSE's transformation plans for the region, which involves the reconfiguration of services in the hospitrals. Mr Fitzpatrick said that leaving aside the industrial action going on at the moment, the plan for the transformation of services was "not realistic". He said there were not enough beds in the Lourdes Hospital to cope with current demands. "They cannot cope with current demands on the service and yet they want to attract more traffic into the hospital. This will all have a detrimental effect on patient safety in the region," he said. The INMO official said the problem did not lie in the emergency department of the Lourdes but in the hospital's inability to transfer patients out of that department into hospital beds. "What they are doing at the moment is creating intolerable conditions for both patients and staff. They need to sort out the overcrowding problem." HSE staff in the north-east region made their feelings clear on the issue of recruitment of staff from existing hospitals. They said that because there was a recruitment embargo in place, the HSE "now plan to poach staff from other hospitals in the region, including Navan, Cavan, Monaghan, Dundalk and Beaumont". He added: "These staff will not be replaced in those hospitals and current services will continue to be run down. Beaumont Hospital could also suffer if some nurses decide to take up the offers. The HSE needs to clarify this but they are hoping to introduce the changes without explaining the consequences." Navan Hospital staff said they were "very concerned" about losing key staff and recent leaked plans of HSE in regard to further cutbacks in the hospital were adding to this. The Mayor of Navan, Cllr Joe Reilly, said the proposal by the HSE seeking medical staff to transfer from Our Lady's Hospital to Drogheda without replacing the staff at Our Lady's was "an absolute disgrace" and a further move by the HSE to further attempt to dismantle services at Our Lady's Hospital. "This comes in the wake of cutbacks of €11.6 million in pay in the Meath-Louth area, including ward clsoures and reduction of staff. The HSE has always claimed that any changes in policy must put patient care at the centre of change. It appears now that the changes being proposed are more in the interest of the HSE than the patients," he said. He called on the medical profession in Meath, and in particular the medical staff at Our Lady's Hospital, to make their views known publicly if they believed that what was happening at Our Lady's Hospital was in the real interests of the people of Meath and the provision of best medical care. "Our Lady's Hospital is being slowly stripped of its core services as a hospital. If the people of Navan and Meath are interested in maintaining Our Lady's Hospital, they must speak out now because soon there will be no general hospital to defend. "Fianna Fail promised us a 'world class health service'. They failed. Today we have a reduced and poorer health service. Will it be this FF and Green Government that will finally close Our Lady's Hospital as a fully operational hospital?" he asked.