Strike threat as nurses say they can no longer work in Northern Ireland's crisis-hit health service
Pay disparity with the rest of the UK and workforce shortages highlighted
Last updated 13th May 2019
Exasperated nurses could go on strike across Northern Ireland over a “perfect storm” of issues impacting on our crisis-hit health service, it was revealed today (Monday).
These include a longstanding disparity in pay with counterparts across UK.
And new Royal College of Nursing NI director, Pat Cullen, says that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency by the Department of Health.
Ms Cullen says that if nothing happens by the end of June, the union will be forced to ballot its members over industrial action.
It is believed gaining parity with the rest of the UK could cost around £18m.
Ms Cullen who has only been in her job a week, says she is acutely aware of the current crisis in the NHS.
“Our health service is in crisis,” she said.
“We have 2,500 vacant posts – that does not take into account the independent sector which has equally the same number of vacancies. That’s about 12% of our workforce.”
And she highlighted the worrying extent of the crisis by revealing that there are times when nurses cannot simply do their job.
“On occasions, nurses are telling us that they are not able to provide the care that they want to provide to a patient in the greatest hour of need – what I mean by that is in their dying hours,” she added.
"It's palpable when you see nurses coming in tears to our organisation to say they can no longer continue to work like this."