Written Answers - Nursing Staff.
Liz McManus
Ceist:
183
Ms McManus
asked the
Minister for Health and Children
the number of nursing vacancies in the Eastern Regional Health Authority region and in the country as a whole; the projected need for additional nursing places for the next seven years; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
[12861/01]
The Health Service Employers Agency, HSEA, undertook a survey of nursing vacancies at 31 January 2001. A copy of this survey will be forwarded directly to the Deputy.
The total number of nursing vacancies reported was 1,315. When account is taken of the service of agency nurses – 423 per day – and overtime working – equivalent to 592 nurses per day – the net number of vacancies at 31 January 2001 stands at 300. The gross number of vacancies reported for the Eastern Regional Health Auth ority region, excluding the learning disability sector, was 1,148.79.
The survey reported that a total of 4,226 nurses were recruited in the year ending 31 January 2001, and that a total of 2,954 resigned or retired in the same period. Accordingly, the recruitment of nurses continues to run strongly ahead of the numbers leaving, with a net increase of 1,272 nurses in the system.
With regard to the projected need for additional nursing places for the next seven years, the commission on nursing identified a need to strengthen the workforce planning functions in my Department. My Department acted on the recommendation by setting up a study of the nursing and midwifery resource in December 1998. The aim of the project is to analyse the present position with regard to the nursing and midwifery workforce, to devise a system for the projection of future needs and to plan how these needs may be met.
This project arises from the need for an enhanced focus on workforce planning having regard, in particular, to the availability of sufficient nurses now and in the future. The nurse staffing difficulties now confronting the Irish health service mirror the situation in other countries where shortages of nurses have been a problem for several years. The experience of countries that have been dealing with this problem indicates that there is no simple solution and that a multifaceted approach is required in addressing this complex issue.
A steering group chaired by my Department's chief nursing officer was convened in December 1998 to oversee the nursing and midwifery resource project. The group focused on developing a base line on nursing and midwifery employment. Part of creating the base line involved conducting a survey to obtain a national overview of the provision of post-registration courses in specialised areas of clinical practice and the number of places available.
The steering group commissioned a national study of turnover in nursing and midwifery which is being undertaken by a research team in the department of nursing studies, University College, Cork. In February 2000 and March 2001 a survey was also undertaken to gain an insight into the provision of return to nursing and midwifery programmes. A survey of nursing and midwifery employment in the independent sector – nursing homes, private hospitals, intellectual disability services, physical disabilities, palliative care services and nursing agencies – was conducted in May 2000 to provide an understanding of the size and requirement of employment in the independent sector.
An interim report of the study was published in September 2000. The nursing and midwifery resource interim report of the steering group identified as an urgent priority the refinement of systems and processes used to supply essential information to ensure that forecasts for future nursing and midwifery requirement are feasible and improve over time. Highlighted in the interim report are the inadequacies of existing databases to yield reliable information on which to base forecasts. To address this, work is progressing on the development of a new personnel, payroll, attendance recruitment system – PPARS – that will capture essential data on each individual and post within the health service. The PPARS project is a fundamental building block in developing dependable, reliable and robust quality information to forecast human resource requirements for the health service in the future.
In 2000 there was a 25% increase in the number of nurse training places from 1,200 to 1,500. The interim report recommended that the annual intake of nursing students should continue at this level until at least 2003. My Department has accepted this recommendation. In addition, with a view to increasing the number of general nursing training places in Dublin, funding has been provided to St. Michael's Hospital, Dún Laoghaire, to commence the pre-registration nursing diploma programme in autumn 2001 with an annual intake of 40 students.
