This article is from page 16 of the 2009-11-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
THE closure of Orchard Lodge and Gort Glass has nothing to do with pa- tient care, and everything to do with a nursing Crisis.
That is according to the Psychiatric Nurses Association representative Denis Meehan who maintains that nursing staff predicted this crisis six months ago.
“We saw this coming last May and brought it to the Labour Relation Commission,’ said Mr Meehan.
There are currently vacancies for 37 nursing staff in the Clare mental health service, he said.
‘A further five nurses are to leave the service before the end of the year.”
‘The service 1s run as much as pos- sible on overtime,’ he said.
Mr Meehan said that even with the closure of the rehab units in Ennis and Kilrush there will still be a shortage of nursing staff in the Clare mental health services.
He maintains that the policy being enacted by the HSE is not going to
solve the problem, but merely move it around.
Mr Meehan also refuted comments that the closure of the two units was part of the process of community liv- ing.
“There is no outreach team in west Clare or talks of one,” he said.
This week the HSE maintains that the review of mental health services in Clare is taking place against a back- ground of a 21.3 per cent decline in the number of nurses working in the Clare Mental Health services between
January 2008 and the current national moratorium on recruitment.
The closures of the two units – Or- chard Lodge and Gort Glas – are also part of “a need to respond to the com- plex requirements of specialized serv- ices to patients in accordance with best practice in modern health care”’.
“Our engagement with the staff as- sociations is further informed by a requirement to submit a management proposal to the Labour Relations Commission (LRC). The referral to the LRC was made by the staff associ-
ations following what they described as managements failure to recruit psy- chiatric nurses for the Clare Mental Health Services.
“At a meeting of the LRC held on Thursday September 24, 2009 under the chairmanship of Mr John Agnew, all parties agreed that management would come up with a proposal to ensure the continuing safe delivery of services in the context of existing resource constraints. The next LRC is scheduled for November 23, 2009,’ the HSE said.