Nurses speak out on NI staffing shortage

The Royal College of Nursing’s Northern Ireland director Rita Devlin said the nursing shortage is having an impact on surgery.

In a statement, she described the lack of action since strike action in the months leading up to the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020 as “extremely disappointing”.

“We are seriously concerned at the potential consequences of ongoing redeployment of nursing staff alongside high levels of vacancies,” she warned.

“This will have serious consequences on the ability to carry out surgery and other procedures that impact waiting lists, and therefore patients.

“We have been raising our concerns for many years about deficits in the nursing workforce, virtually no workforce planning and total underinvestment which, on top of a pandemic, is having dire consequences.

“It is extremely disappointing that two years on from taking industrial action over the issue, we have hardly moved forward in relation to achieving much-needed safe staffing legislation. This is the only way to protect the nursing workforce in the future.”

She continued: “Just yesterday, our medical colleagues were raising the same concerns about the impact of nursing redeployment and vacancies on their ability to carry out surgery and how this is affecting the training of surgeons for the future. This lurching from crisis to crisis with no sense of a plan to get out of it must stop. Short-term decision making will have a long-term detrimental impact on the whole health service which will be felt for years to come.”

She added: “Despite plenty of evidence, there appears to be a lack of learning from previous waves of the pandemic and nearly two years later we are in a worse position than ever. With so many staff absent, they are struggling to treat their patients safely.”