Coronavirus: Recruitment drive could see 11,000 health workers hired
Up to 11,000 new nurses and health and social care professionals could be hired as part of the government’s new recruitment drive.
Of these, there could be 2,250 extra intensive care unit nurses alone to staff government plans to increase the number of ICU beds in hospitals.
Estimates before the Covid-19 crisis of the number of extra nurses the health service would need by 2025 was just under 5,500.
While there could also be a requirement for almost as many more extra general nurses in the coming weeks and months as ICU nurses, the HSE is also looking to hire around 5,500 health and social care professionals (HSCPs).
They include pharmacy staff, dietitians, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, cardiology and respiratory specialists.
How many nurses the health service needs over the coming weeks will, says Irish Nurses and Midwives general secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha, depends on the predicted inpatient population.
“It depends on how quickly we have admissions to hospital or otherwise,” she said.
“For the moment everybody is being deployed and elective procedures have been cancelled. Staff have been redeployed.
“That’s okay for the moment but when we need more beds and inpatient beds the prediction is they will provide 10,000 more beds and obviously they will need a large number of nurses.” She said that ICU beds need 4.5 nurses to cover the 24-hour cycle of care.
The number of HSCPs is also set to increase. As of March last year, there were 16,604 HSCPs, representing 25% of the clinical workforce and 14% of the overall health services workforce.
Éamonn Donnelly, head of health and welfare with Fórsa trade union, recently said in a call by the union for more staff: “The full complement of HSCPs in both acute and community care is essential to optimising patient flow through busy hospitals all the way from the emergency department to rehab.”
The extra HSCPs the HSE is understood to have agreed can be hired, have all been interviewed for posts previously.
Hospitals have, it is understood, been told to recruit as many of the 5,577 HSCPs who previously applied for specific posts in the HSE in recent years.
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