Cork student nurses deserve certainty, not broken promises from HSE
Cork student nurses deserve certainty, not broken promises from HSE - The Labour Party
- CUH nurse job fiasco demands answers from HSE and Minister
Labour Senator Laura Harmon has called on the HSE to immediately honour permanent job offers made to student nurses at Cork University Hospital and for the Minister for Health to establish whether similar offers have been withdrawn elsewhere in the country. This comes as HSE South West has apologised after nurses who interviewed for permanent positions in June and accepted offers in late August were subsequently told those offers were no longer valid.
Senator Harmon said:
“This is completely unacceptable. These nurses have spent years training and working at Cork University Hospital. They went through interviews in June, received permanent full-time job offers and accepted those jobs only weeks ago. Now, at the eleventh hour, the rug has been pulled from under them.
“We constantly hear about the pressure facing our hospitals and the difficulty recruiting and retaining healthcare workers. Yet here we have nurses who we have trained here being told that jobs they had already accepted are no longer available.
“This is particularly extraordinary given what happened at CUH over the summer. We learned that more than 800 funded and approved posts across the hospital group faced delays in appointment, while the INMO raised serious concerns about staffing levels and patient safety. Against that backdrop, how can anyone justify creating even more uncertainty for nurses ready and willing to work at CUH?
“There is also an urgent question for the Minister for Health about whether this is confined to Cork and the South West. We need a clear answer on whether student nurses elsewhere have had job offers withdrawn or changed because of funding or recruitment restrictions.
“We cannot continue training desperately needed nurses only to put barriers in their way when they want to stay and work in our public health service. The HSE must honour the offers made to these Cork nurses and the Minister must immediately establish whether this is happening anywhere else in the country.”