asked the Minister for Health if he will direct all health authorities to have all psychiatric nursing vacancies, temporary and otherwise, filled from properly constituted trainee psychiatric nursing panels and that other systems of recruitment to temporary employments be discontinued, as such systems can only result in a lowering of nursing standards for psychiatric patients.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Psychiatric Nursing Vacancies.
36.
No appointments are made to the permanent nursing establishments of local authority psychiatric hospitals other than registered nurses or trainee psychiatric nurses. The latter are appointed from duly constituted panels.
It was the practice of some health authorities to provide relief for members of the nursing staff on annual or sick leave by the engagement of nursing attendants, who are not persons in training, on a purely casual and temporary basis. However, to an increasing extent such relief is now provided by special augmentation of the permanent nursing establishments and, in some hospitals, by the temporary appointment of registered nurses, for example, female nurses who retired on marriage.
Where nursing attendants still have to be employed it is the general practice of health authorities to engage them from the panel of persons awaiting a call to training in psychiatric nursing wherever this is possible.