People Before Profit TD and spokesperson on health, Gino Kenny, has said that reports of hospital staff choosing to leave their jobs in emergency departments due to dangerous and impossible conditions are “a shocking indictment of the government’s mismanagement of the health service.”
He said that there needed to be an intensive recruitment and retention campaign in the public health system where staff are paid decent wages that allow them to maintain a decent standard of living. This is essential in order to recruit enough staff so that bed numbers can be increased in order to ease the overcrowding scandal.
He said: “Workers in our public health service feel let down and abandoned by the government. They are leaving the public health service because they say it is dangerous and impossible to work in. This is an indictment of this government’s handling of the public health system and shows the need for radical measures to be taken.
“What needs to happen to ease the crisis in emergency departments and the wider health service is a major recruitment and retention campaign. This is needed so that we can bring more beds on stream to ease the overcrowding crisis.
“Government has to now realize that our health service is under the most intense pressure. They need to pay health staff properly so we can recruit and retain staff. If they do not do this our health service will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis. We cannot afford to continue to allow this situation to continue and we cannot continue to hemorrhage health staff as we currently are.”