15 thoughts on “What Do We Want?”

          1. ABM

            I feel sorry for Irish nurses.

            – teenagers are told how great nursing is pointing to nurses from a previous generation who live in suburban houses and have huge pensions
            – new recruits have been sold up the swanny by older colleagues
            – not only that, they must compete with agency workers from all continents
            – older colleagues resent the pay cuts (i.e. USC and tax increases) and don’t give a sh*t (i.e. sit in front of their computers all day)
            – no matter how hard you work, you know that thanks to government flippancy poor policy making; the worst type of unappreciative, entitled patient who pays nothing is more and more common.
            – you are cannon fodder for the HSE

  3. phil

    A nurse once told me that they have X patients in each ward, she felt that they could comfortably handle more, a handful of more patients , say X +3 in each ward. They wont do this because the Union told them not to.

    So I asked her about overcrowing , how can you protest , knowing that you can easily solve the problem yourselves. She replied that it always been that way, that the union feels that its easier to get more resources , if they make a holy show, and get noticed by the public. The public then being rightly upset, write to their politicians .

    Both sides are telling tall tales and the public are in the middle , confused and concerned …

    1. Clampers Outside!

      Using a friends anecdote doesn’t help much with how correct information spreads, but I hear ya.

      My brother’s a theatre porter doing an 84 hr week every second week switching from nights to days each time, so he sees the place in the busy days and in the night too. He says the hospital he works in is under staffed…. ‘under staffed’ / ‘over crowded’ bit of the same really. He’s not in any union as far as I know.

      That’s me tuppence

      1. Planet of the Missing Biros

        So you reply to an anecdote with your own anecdote.

        Keep your tuppence. You’re like the yappy person at the table who talks a lot but says nothing.

        1. munkifisht

          Well, I can only come in with my own anecdotal evidence, but I worked in a hospital for 3 years as front line staff, and how the screw is being tightened and who’s being effected (doctors, nurses and other frontliners and of course patients) is worrying. Things are much easier in the private sector. Ireland’s a great place to live but an awful one to die in.

    2. Sidewinder

      What kind of ward is your friend on? Is it a unit for chronic or acute cases? Post-op? Day procedures? CCU? Neo-nate?

      These things matter. Your one friend’s experiences are not representative of the whole.

  4. ivan

    I guess I can comment because they’re protesting about Galway A&E, and i was there in February. I didn’t have anything life threatening – cellulitis, which if it goes unchecked can be bad. I’d gone to my own doctor on the Wednesday and he prescribed antibiotics, but they did nowt, such that by Friday evening my ankle had swollen quite a lot. My doctor wrote me a letter for Galway. Before I left, I packed supplies (I’m coeliac, so handy to have ones own GF grub in the bag). I arrived at 9pm Friday night. I was seen at 11am Saturday morning.

    I know, like I say, my situation wasn’t life threatening, but given that there were no incidents (that I saw) of Friday-night-drunk-injuries, 14 hours waiting is quite a long time. I was given a trolley for a 4 hour snooze, so that was nice.

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